Post by goldenfist on Dec 6, 2008 11:20:09 GMT -5
With the release of Secret Invasion #8, readers finally have a better idea of what Dark Reign holds in store for the Marvel Universe. Norman Osborn has replaced Tony Stark as the premier defender of the world. The bad guys are running the show now, and that leaves less and less room for the heroes to do their thing.
This shift in the Marvel landscape impacts just about every book, and we're hard at work trying to uncover just what those changes will be. Today we focus on Mighty Avengers. This series has focused on the publicly operating, media-friendly team of heroes that served as the elite fighting force of the 50-State Initiative. That's all poised to change when Dan Slott comes on board as regular writer with next month's issue #21 (we've also included the cover to Mighty #20 in this article, which is Brian Bendis's last).
We already talked with Slott last week, but back then he was only able to reveal basic details about the series. This time around, the writer was able to go into further depth, particularly in terms of the characters involved. While Marvel is still keeping the official roster under wraps for now (though seriously... look at the covers), you can expect to see plenty of familiar faces, along with a few unexpected surprises.
IGN Comics: Is this new team still serving as part of the Initiative, in whatever form it exists now?
Dan Slott: No. No, this is an independent body – the Mighty Avengers.
IGN Comics: So they don't have to answer to Norman Osborn or his bureaucracy?
Slott: They... are not going to operate out of America, per se.
IGN Comics: I see.
Slott: At the end of Secret Invasion #8, you'll see that the president is backing Norman. Well, if the president backs Norman, that's America. These are the Avengers for planet Earth. And Earth isn't just America. This also means we're going to see Avengers adventures anywhere – time, space, microverse. The Marvel Universe is a pretty big place.
IGN Comics: Before now, the distinction was pretty much that the New Avengers were the underground group of heroes, while the Mighty team was the official, public squad. Now it almost sounds like they're both resisting Osborn in their own ways.
Slott: The way I see New Avengers is this. Once you had "Avengers Disassembled," it was kind of the end of a certain era of the Avengers. It paved the way for New Avengers, which was a bold new book with big gun characters who hadn't really had an Avengers presence before, like Spider-Man and Wolverine. Big players.
When Bendis and Cho launched Mighty Avengers, it was a kind of counter-programming. It was kind of like "Avengers Re-assembled," where we saw these characters that had a strong tie to the classic Avengers legacy become a powerful team again. Iron Man, Black Widow, Ms. Marvel, Wonder Man, Wasp – these were Avenger-y Avengers. What's going on now and what I hope to do in Mighty Avengers is to carry on that feel that Bendis and Cho set up. You're going to have Avenger-y Avengers doing Avenger-y things and fighting Avenger-y bad guys.
IGN Comics: It all sounds very Avenger-y.
Slott: Yes, that is the operative adjective – Avenger-y. Or better yet – Avenger-iest. I want to make this the Avenger-iest Avengers book I can.
IGN Comics: I guess here's where we get into the specifics of which characters you're going to use, or at least which ones you can talk about...
Slott: The kind of characters we're going to use in Mighty Avengers are, when you think of your classic Avengers characters and lineups, a lot of times you end up with the big three – Cap, Thor and Iron Man. Then you have these strong, Avengers-only characters like Hawkeye, Vision, Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver – those kind of characters. When I was a kid reading Avengers, you knew that those were the characters that things could happen to. Cap, Thor, and Iron man had to go back to their own books. They weren't going to fall in love and marry or lose a limb or turn into traitors. It was going to be one of those other guys. One of the other guys in the core Avengers team. And it's that level of character that's going to populate the book.
IGN Comics: I was going to say, you can't get much more Avengery than having so many of the original Avengers on the team.
Dan Slott: The guys I can confirm – since we've already let some things out of the bag – are Hank Pym, founding Avenger member, Jocasta, and Scarlet Witch, because she appears on our first cover. But we're also going to have some other characters show up. By the time this is released people will have seen the first two solicits, and they'll know that this big group of heroes in the first adventure is going to include Iron Man, Hercules, and Amadeus Cho. You can't have Hercules without Amadeus Cho. He's kind of like our Rick Jones. Also, Vision and Cassie from Young Avengers, Hulk, and US Agent. By the time that first adventure is over we'll see who's going to stay on the team and who's not. And there may be a surprise or two that doesn't appear on the cover.
IGN Comics: Let's go down the list of these characters a bit. I wanted to ask you about Yellowjacket, first of all, since he appears to be positioned as the team leader.
Slott: There will be a few different people who are vying for team leadership in the first adventure. One of them will be Hank Pym. Not Yellowjacket, but Hank Pym. Hank Pym is going to gain a new identity and a new visual that he has never had before.
IGN Comics: Hmm.
Slott: Hmmm!
IGN Comics: What makes him the ideal candidate to try and lead this team, especially since he's been out of commission for so long?
Slott: Being out of commission for that amount of time makes him the perfect candidate for being the guy in charge. Look what happened while he was gone, when Hank didn't have his eye on the ball, when it was other guys leading the charge. We had a Civil War, a House of M, a World War Hulk. Big disaster-y things happened without Hank being in the room. Maybe it's time for Hank to take a shot.
IGN Comics: Would you say he's trying to atone for some of the things the Skrulls did in his name?
Slott: I could see why, especially since during the Invasion Hank's face was the face of the Secret Invasion. But Hank had no control over what that Skrull did. If anything, Hank's made a lot of mistakes all on his own that he needs to atone for and make amends for, beyond what the impostor did in his name. He's got a truckload of problems all his own that he did with his own hands, so to speak.
IGN Comics: I saw in the first solicit that he's hiding some sort of dark secret from way back in the early days of the team.
Slott: Yes. There is some big secret from the earliest days of the Avengers, some secret that Hank has kept to himself that will play a big part in his motivations.
IGN Comics: How much of a role are characters like Iron Man and Hulk actually going to play? Are they supporting players, since, as you say, they have their own books and their own problems to deal with?
Slott: We'll have to see. I don't want to give away any of the final lineup. Oh, and it's Green Hulk, not Red Hulk, who's going to be in the book.
IGN Comics: I figured. Red Hulk doesn't really play nice with anybody.
Slott: Noooo. No.
IGN Comics: What made you decide to put Vision and Stature in the book? Do you feel that, out of all the Young Avengers, they're the most likely to join a team like this?
Slott: They were the two that had the strongest ties to the Avengers legacy. Cassie lived in Avengers mansion for some time. Cassie looks up to Hank as an uncle. Jarvis is in the book - we have Jarvis. He's someone who looked after Cassie as a small child. She's second generation Avengers.
Meanwhile, Vision, though he's based on the 30th-Century technology of Kang and the Iron Lad armor, he still has the original Vision programming in him. So he has this direct tie to the Avenger of old. When he first started gaining sentience it was Jarvis who would hang around and play chess with him. He's got this nice tie.
Also, with the Scarlet Witch back, you have this nice dynamic where, from Cassie's point of view, Scarlet Witch is responsible for her father's death. From Vision's point of view, there's part of his programming, whether or not it's in his emotional core, that ties him to this incredibly powerful Avengers character who used to be his wife. That's a good love triangle right there.
IGN Comics: When we talked last week you mentioned one of the villains you wanted to play with was Kang. Assuming you do a Kang story at some point, would Vision be the catalyst that brings Kang into the series?
Slott: Could be... if Vision's part of the team... maybe. He says as he dodges the question a little. One of the things we do want to do in this book is use hardcore Avengers villains. Your Ultrons and your Kangs and Count Nefarias. All the classic, really big Avengers villains.
IGN Comics: You've already said there's going to be some conflict with Scarlet Witch and Stature both being on the team. Is Wanda going to be part of a larger conflict where you have all these characters who blame her for what happened in House of M?
Slott: [laughs] I really don't want to give too much away. You're going to have to read the issues to see how Scarlet Witch plays out as part of this team and how she interacts with them.
IGN Comics: You've confirmed Jocasta is on this team. She's less of a big name in the Marvel U. than the rest, so what was it about her that called out to you and made her seem like a good fit?
Slott: In the wake of what's happened in Secret Invasion #8, Jocasta isn't just a robot, she's a robot that's been built off of Janet Van Dyne's brain patterns.
IGN Comics: Interesting...
Slott: Yeah. It's almost like a weird way of having Janet still on the team.
IGN Comics: I was going to ask if there was any chance you could throw Machine Man in there too, but maybe this new Jocasta doesn't have quite the same connection to him...
Slott: She's still Jocasta and acting the way Jocasta acts and being the way Jocasta is. But I think we're going to explore more of the concept of her being based on Janet's brain patterns. But she's still the same drama-filled robot that we've seen over the years. But who knows? Maybe Machine Man will pop on by to cause some more strife. She's this lovelorn robot girl with such great Avengers ties and history behind her.
There are certain things that make you an Avenger. Jarvis waits on you. Captain America trains you. George Perez draws you. Starfox sleeps with you. [laughs] There are just certain things that make you an Avenger. She meets a lot of that criteria. Not the Starfox part, but everything else.
IGN Comics: Well, now's your chance.
Slott: [laughs]
IGN Comics: The last character I'll touch on here is US Agent.
Slott: Yay!
IGN Comics: He's been hanging out in Canada lately.
Slott: Which is the perfect place for US Agent, isn't it? [laughs]
IGN Comics: Exactly. Does that mean the team is headed for Canada in the early issues?
Slott: I think it's a safer bet to assume that US Agent is coming to them. This book shouldn't be Alpha Flight or Omega Flight. There's already an Omega Flight. But you'll have to see. It's going to be fun. The team needs a shield-slinger in the book. You've just gotta have it. We're going to have a lot of characters, as you can see from the first few covers. You're going to see a lot of characters in the first big adventure. Whether he'll make the cut is another story.
IGN Comics: One of the things that sold me on Dark Reign was hearing that Bendis described it as a situation where all the Marvel heroes suffer from "Peter Parker luck" now. They try to do good, but with the world the way it is now it has a tendency to blow up in their faces. Do you see that being an element of your book, even though these are the Avengers and they're meant to be the best and the brightest.
Slott: The minute you have Hank Pym in there it's not hard to call them the best an the brightest. I don't think there's a mind on Earth like Hank Pym's. But thee characters are going to have baggage too, which will make for good drama and tension. My take is that, in the world of Dark Reign, the Mighty Avengers are the ray of light. With all this stuff coming down, this is a book about heroes stepping up to be heroes again, to do the heroic things that need to be done.
IGN Comics: And with that, I think we'll leave off from there. Thanks for talking with me, Dan. I'm looking forward to your issues.
Slott: Thanks, Jesse
This shift in the Marvel landscape impacts just about every book, and we're hard at work trying to uncover just what those changes will be. Today we focus on Mighty Avengers. This series has focused on the publicly operating, media-friendly team of heroes that served as the elite fighting force of the 50-State Initiative. That's all poised to change when Dan Slott comes on board as regular writer with next month's issue #21 (we've also included the cover to Mighty #20 in this article, which is Brian Bendis's last).
We already talked with Slott last week, but back then he was only able to reveal basic details about the series. This time around, the writer was able to go into further depth, particularly in terms of the characters involved. While Marvel is still keeping the official roster under wraps for now (though seriously... look at the covers), you can expect to see plenty of familiar faces, along with a few unexpected surprises.
IGN Comics: Is this new team still serving as part of the Initiative, in whatever form it exists now?
Dan Slott: No. No, this is an independent body – the Mighty Avengers.
IGN Comics: So they don't have to answer to Norman Osborn or his bureaucracy?
Slott: They... are not going to operate out of America, per se.
IGN Comics: I see.
Slott: At the end of Secret Invasion #8, you'll see that the president is backing Norman. Well, if the president backs Norman, that's America. These are the Avengers for planet Earth. And Earth isn't just America. This also means we're going to see Avengers adventures anywhere – time, space, microverse. The Marvel Universe is a pretty big place.
IGN Comics: Before now, the distinction was pretty much that the New Avengers were the underground group of heroes, while the Mighty team was the official, public squad. Now it almost sounds like they're both resisting Osborn in their own ways.
Slott: The way I see New Avengers is this. Once you had "Avengers Disassembled," it was kind of the end of a certain era of the Avengers. It paved the way for New Avengers, which was a bold new book with big gun characters who hadn't really had an Avengers presence before, like Spider-Man and Wolverine. Big players.
When Bendis and Cho launched Mighty Avengers, it was a kind of counter-programming. It was kind of like "Avengers Re-assembled," where we saw these characters that had a strong tie to the classic Avengers legacy become a powerful team again. Iron Man, Black Widow, Ms. Marvel, Wonder Man, Wasp – these were Avenger-y Avengers. What's going on now and what I hope to do in Mighty Avengers is to carry on that feel that Bendis and Cho set up. You're going to have Avenger-y Avengers doing Avenger-y things and fighting Avenger-y bad guys.
IGN Comics: It all sounds very Avenger-y.
Slott: Yes, that is the operative adjective – Avenger-y. Or better yet – Avenger-iest. I want to make this the Avenger-iest Avengers book I can.
IGN Comics: I guess here's where we get into the specifics of which characters you're going to use, or at least which ones you can talk about...
Slott: The kind of characters we're going to use in Mighty Avengers are, when you think of your classic Avengers characters and lineups, a lot of times you end up with the big three – Cap, Thor and Iron Man. Then you have these strong, Avengers-only characters like Hawkeye, Vision, Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver – those kind of characters. When I was a kid reading Avengers, you knew that those were the characters that things could happen to. Cap, Thor, and Iron man had to go back to their own books. They weren't going to fall in love and marry or lose a limb or turn into traitors. It was going to be one of those other guys. One of the other guys in the core Avengers team. And it's that level of character that's going to populate the book.
IGN Comics: I was going to say, you can't get much more Avengery than having so many of the original Avengers on the team.
Dan Slott: The guys I can confirm – since we've already let some things out of the bag – are Hank Pym, founding Avenger member, Jocasta, and Scarlet Witch, because she appears on our first cover. But we're also going to have some other characters show up. By the time this is released people will have seen the first two solicits, and they'll know that this big group of heroes in the first adventure is going to include Iron Man, Hercules, and Amadeus Cho. You can't have Hercules without Amadeus Cho. He's kind of like our Rick Jones. Also, Vision and Cassie from Young Avengers, Hulk, and US Agent. By the time that first adventure is over we'll see who's going to stay on the team and who's not. And there may be a surprise or two that doesn't appear on the cover.
IGN Comics: Let's go down the list of these characters a bit. I wanted to ask you about Yellowjacket, first of all, since he appears to be positioned as the team leader.
Slott: There will be a few different people who are vying for team leadership in the first adventure. One of them will be Hank Pym. Not Yellowjacket, but Hank Pym. Hank Pym is going to gain a new identity and a new visual that he has never had before.
IGN Comics: Hmm.
Slott: Hmmm!
IGN Comics: What makes him the ideal candidate to try and lead this team, especially since he's been out of commission for so long?
Slott: Being out of commission for that amount of time makes him the perfect candidate for being the guy in charge. Look what happened while he was gone, when Hank didn't have his eye on the ball, when it was other guys leading the charge. We had a Civil War, a House of M, a World War Hulk. Big disaster-y things happened without Hank being in the room. Maybe it's time for Hank to take a shot.
IGN Comics: Would you say he's trying to atone for some of the things the Skrulls did in his name?
Slott: I could see why, especially since during the Invasion Hank's face was the face of the Secret Invasion. But Hank had no control over what that Skrull did. If anything, Hank's made a lot of mistakes all on his own that he needs to atone for and make amends for, beyond what the impostor did in his name. He's got a truckload of problems all his own that he did with his own hands, so to speak.
IGN Comics: I saw in the first solicit that he's hiding some sort of dark secret from way back in the early days of the team.
Slott: Yes. There is some big secret from the earliest days of the Avengers, some secret that Hank has kept to himself that will play a big part in his motivations.
IGN Comics: How much of a role are characters like Iron Man and Hulk actually going to play? Are they supporting players, since, as you say, they have their own books and their own problems to deal with?
Slott: We'll have to see. I don't want to give away any of the final lineup. Oh, and it's Green Hulk, not Red Hulk, who's going to be in the book.
IGN Comics: I figured. Red Hulk doesn't really play nice with anybody.
Slott: Noooo. No.
IGN Comics: What made you decide to put Vision and Stature in the book? Do you feel that, out of all the Young Avengers, they're the most likely to join a team like this?
Slott: They were the two that had the strongest ties to the Avengers legacy. Cassie lived in Avengers mansion for some time. Cassie looks up to Hank as an uncle. Jarvis is in the book - we have Jarvis. He's someone who looked after Cassie as a small child. She's second generation Avengers.
Meanwhile, Vision, though he's based on the 30th-Century technology of Kang and the Iron Lad armor, he still has the original Vision programming in him. So he has this direct tie to the Avenger of old. When he first started gaining sentience it was Jarvis who would hang around and play chess with him. He's got this nice tie.
Also, with the Scarlet Witch back, you have this nice dynamic where, from Cassie's point of view, Scarlet Witch is responsible for her father's death. From Vision's point of view, there's part of his programming, whether or not it's in his emotional core, that ties him to this incredibly powerful Avengers character who used to be his wife. That's a good love triangle right there.
IGN Comics: When we talked last week you mentioned one of the villains you wanted to play with was Kang. Assuming you do a Kang story at some point, would Vision be the catalyst that brings Kang into the series?
Slott: Could be... if Vision's part of the team... maybe. He says as he dodges the question a little. One of the things we do want to do in this book is use hardcore Avengers villains. Your Ultrons and your Kangs and Count Nefarias. All the classic, really big Avengers villains.
IGN Comics: You've already said there's going to be some conflict with Scarlet Witch and Stature both being on the team. Is Wanda going to be part of a larger conflict where you have all these characters who blame her for what happened in House of M?
Slott: [laughs] I really don't want to give too much away. You're going to have to read the issues to see how Scarlet Witch plays out as part of this team and how she interacts with them.
IGN Comics: You've confirmed Jocasta is on this team. She's less of a big name in the Marvel U. than the rest, so what was it about her that called out to you and made her seem like a good fit?
Slott: In the wake of what's happened in Secret Invasion #8, Jocasta isn't just a robot, she's a robot that's been built off of Janet Van Dyne's brain patterns.
IGN Comics: Interesting...
Slott: Yeah. It's almost like a weird way of having Janet still on the team.
IGN Comics: I was going to ask if there was any chance you could throw Machine Man in there too, but maybe this new Jocasta doesn't have quite the same connection to him...
Slott: She's still Jocasta and acting the way Jocasta acts and being the way Jocasta is. But I think we're going to explore more of the concept of her being based on Janet's brain patterns. But she's still the same drama-filled robot that we've seen over the years. But who knows? Maybe Machine Man will pop on by to cause some more strife. She's this lovelorn robot girl with such great Avengers ties and history behind her.
There are certain things that make you an Avenger. Jarvis waits on you. Captain America trains you. George Perez draws you. Starfox sleeps with you. [laughs] There are just certain things that make you an Avenger. She meets a lot of that criteria. Not the Starfox part, but everything else.
IGN Comics: Well, now's your chance.
Slott: [laughs]
IGN Comics: The last character I'll touch on here is US Agent.
Slott: Yay!
IGN Comics: He's been hanging out in Canada lately.
Slott: Which is the perfect place for US Agent, isn't it? [laughs]
IGN Comics: Exactly. Does that mean the team is headed for Canada in the early issues?
Slott: I think it's a safer bet to assume that US Agent is coming to them. This book shouldn't be Alpha Flight or Omega Flight. There's already an Omega Flight. But you'll have to see. It's going to be fun. The team needs a shield-slinger in the book. You've just gotta have it. We're going to have a lot of characters, as you can see from the first few covers. You're going to see a lot of characters in the first big adventure. Whether he'll make the cut is another story.
IGN Comics: One of the things that sold me on Dark Reign was hearing that Bendis described it as a situation where all the Marvel heroes suffer from "Peter Parker luck" now. They try to do good, but with the world the way it is now it has a tendency to blow up in their faces. Do you see that being an element of your book, even though these are the Avengers and they're meant to be the best and the brightest.
Slott: The minute you have Hank Pym in there it's not hard to call them the best an the brightest. I don't think there's a mind on Earth like Hank Pym's. But thee characters are going to have baggage too, which will make for good drama and tension. My take is that, in the world of Dark Reign, the Mighty Avengers are the ray of light. With all this stuff coming down, this is a book about heroes stepping up to be heroes again, to do the heroic things that need to be done.
IGN Comics: And with that, I think we'll leave off from there. Thanks for talking with me, Dan. I'm looking forward to your issues.
Slott: Thanks, Jesse
