Interviews

LWW: I’m at such a point with comics that I don’t believe characters are dead, but you had me convinced with Foggy! You had me absolutely convinced.

ED: How could I kill Foggy Nelson? He’s like the heart of the book. I’d have to be crazy.

Well, you know, the new writer comes along, you just don’t know.

And that’s why I did it that issue, that first issue. I needed Matt to be driven even more insane in prison by making him think Foggy’s dead. Right there in print, the last line of the issue is Matt thinking ‘his heart is still beating’, so it was a blatant clue that he wasn’t dead. That’s what I’ve found with mystery writing, the more blatant you put the clue the less people see it. We never showed Foggy’s body, it was always just … Dakota North even said ‘in the ambulance they said they’d stabilized him’, it was all right there.

And I wanted that moment when he pulls that sort of Henry Hill moment from the end of Goodfellas when he opens the door in witness protection and picks up the paper … I knew that even though the mystery of who the other Daredevil was had gotten out I was just really relieved that the real mystery that I’d been sitting on, that I really cared about … I didn’t care if people knew that it was Danny Rand, I’d rather they didn’t but that didn’t bug me as much as if it had been revealed that Foggy wasn’t actually dead, that would have bugged me. I was relieved that there was some other thing that folks thought was more important than it really was.

That was just an amazing thing to read for the first time on the page, as well. I kind of pick and choose my spoilers, and that was one of those thing where I read it and thought ‘I’m so glad I hadn’t read that anywhere else, I’m so glad I had that experience of turning the page and dropping my jaw.

I never read solicits for comics that I’m following. It always amazes me that people do. Or read spoilers online, or in gossip columns. I remember a while back something got leaked – it might have been who was Ronin or who was in the Daredevil suit – and someone said ‘where do I get my Rich Johnston was right T-Shirt?’ and I said it’s not like Rich guessed it, someone leaked to Rich what the story is. That’s like if you’re on the way to see the Sixth Sense and someone who’d seen it already goes ‘oh yeah, Bruce Willis is a ghost.’ Is that person right? And that was my point – spoiling storylines is not gossip. Gossip is The Boys is getting cancelled, that’s gossip, stuff behind the scenes. Stuff that happens in the comics, that’s fiction. You don’t ruin people’s fiction. That just drives me crazy.

You never see [New York Post & former Fox News gossip columnist] Liz Smith go ’and Oceans 11 is about a heist’. She tells you who George Clooney’s dating, not what the storyline of his next movie is and what the twist at the end is. Revealing that there’s a new Captain Marvel book spinning out of Civil War, that’s gossip. That doesn’t ruin anything. Saying ‘they’re bringing back Uncle Ben’ isn’t gossip, unless it doesn’t happen, and then it is; and I’m pretty sure it’s not happening. I hope not! Is nothing sacred???

With regard to Bucky and Captain America, how much of what’s happened with Winter Soldier was planned out, at least just in your head, before the first issue of Cap came out?

Oh, all of it. My whole pitch for Captain America was a rough outline for the first two years of storylines, well, the first year and where we could go from there. Most of it centered around bringing back Bucky and how bringing back Bucky made sense – the whole outline of why we had never seen him before and what they’d been doing with him, how he comes back and how he gets his memories back and what would happen from that point on, how he wouldn’t just immediately become a member of the Avengers or something and be this tortured Marvel character.

That’s why I liked the idea of bringing him back, he’s one of the ultimate Stan Lee-esque characters, real feet of clay, tortured about his past kind of guy. When I came up with a way to actually bring him back that made sense and played into the military black ops direction that the book was going in, I really knew that this was actually going to work. Of course, I had doubts right up to the minute that issue #6 was actually published … ‘Are we breaking the cardinal rule here? Is this going to be the end of my career?’ Instead it was the thing that made me.

What’s interesting is that the sales on Captain America were consistently rising a little every month, even before Civil War

Cap and Daredevil, for a series of months, were going up almost consistently a thousand or two every month. It was pretty weird, and after that to do the three Civil War issues which jumped up to 90,000 or so – that was pretty big, and Cap #25 will probably do even more because it’s so big and getting a real publicity push from Marvel. That’s something that can only really happen because of Civil War – I was building up to this thing and I couldn’t figure out a way to do it and then when they sat down at the meeting and told me all the ideas for Civil War I just thought ‘that’s great’, I’ll push this thing up a bit that I was going to do at issue #28 or so and do it at #25 and then this gives me a whole new door to open on how to move various plotlines along and make a big splash with Cap again after having been out for a few years, and keep some of those Civil War readers around.

I was wondering if Civil War had forced you to change your plans for the title at all

It didn’t force me to change anything, it forced me to change the timing of one thing a little, but as I said, I’m pretty happy about that now. The other great thing about Civil War was that because of the Civil War delays and Cap getting delayed by several months I was able to slide in the Winter Soldier special that I’d been wanting to do.

Cap, Daredevil, Iron Fist – all characters who are against registration

Fuck registration.

Did you have a hand in that?

I hadn’t really thought about it. Daredevil, of course, would be, because of what happened to him, getting outed in the press and everything. With Daredevil, Matt Murdock was out of the country for a the months of Civil War and they had Danny Rand running around in the Daredevil costume in Civil War so that predicated that he would be anti-registration because he’s on Cap’s side in Civil War. That was really all decided for me, but I agree that they’d all be anti that.

How much control, if any, do you have of Bucky’s future appearances? Is there any kind of policy on that?

Yeah. Pretty much nobody uses him without me saying it’s okay. At this point he’s my guy, he’s my baby and Jeph Loeb is using him for his … he’s doing a series of specials that follows Civil War and Bucky is in one of those with Wolverine. That ties in really well with how Daniel Way used him and ties in with Cap #25 and stuff. That was all cleared with him and I gave him copious notes as to what his attitudes would be and how to write the character. It’s not like I’m wielding an iron fist over him but at the same time he’s not joining the New Avengers – unless he’s the new Ronin, and I’m not sure about that. [New Avengers writer Brian Michael] Bendis won’t tell me! I believe he’s not joining the New Avengers but … if I would trust anybody to use him without my say so it would be Bendis. But nobody wants to ruin the story that I’ve got going and Tom [Brevoort] is very protective of Winter Soldier and Bucky and what I’ve got going on in Cap.

When you’ve got a book like Cap that’s selling better than Cap’s sold for along time, that’s got critical acclaim, everything seems to be going so well for it, how tempting is it to avoid shaking up the status quo?

Not very much actually – after a couple of years you wanna shake things up. I’ve had ideas in my head for each storyline building up the one that comes before it, to the point where we end up with Cap #50 having completed a trail that began in Cap #1 really – I’ve kind of modeled it, in a way, after the way Bendis & Maleev did Daredevil, where I felt that every storyline was organically flowing into the next storyline and I liked that they weren’t just doing a six issue storyline and not following up anything from the previous one. I like that old school of dangling plot threads, I like … it’s one of the things that I miss about comics from the 70s is all the dangling plot threads from back then.

What are the chances that we might so someone else wearing a Captain America costume in the future?

I think fairly slim. I’m sure that people want that to be a rumour that’s going around, that someone else is going to be Captain America, but as far as I know there’s not going to be anyone else running around in a Captain America costume in the Captain America comic itself. I know that there’s a sort of twisted bastardized version of the Captain America costume happening in one of my friends’ comics. I don’t want to ruin any of the post-Civil War stuff but Captain America the comic will not be about anyone else putting on the Captain America costume. Unless it’s Bucky [laughs evily].

Don’t do this to me!!!

Captain America, the comic, do you always see it as being Steve Rogers as Captain America centric?

I actually view it as an ensemble cast in a way, it focuses more on Steve but Sharon Carter, The Falcon, Nick Fury, Bucky, all these other characters help paint the stories and Cap is really more the focal point of it, and Steve Rogers and who he is and what he stands for is pretty much what the next story is all about. The first story was all about Bucky, the second storyline was all about the Red Skull and what he’s up to and willing to do, the next big storyline is all about Steve Rogers and who he is and why he’s Captain America and why he became the guy that he did. Those are just the underlying themes to a bunch of superhero stories.

Do you expect Steve will be part of that cast?

Why does everyone think Captain America’s gonna die? Everybody’s like, ‘he’s gonna die at the end of Civil War’. Everyone has said, ‘he’s not gonna die at the end of Civil War.’

But wait until you see Captain America #25 – some shocking stuff happens, some pretty twisted stuff. Nobody’s really pointed out that in issue #22 … I think it was #22 … it was revealed that Sharon Carter’s being mind-fucked by the Red Skull and Doctor Faustus so there’s some bad stuff gearing up to happen pretty soon and the Red Skull has been hatching a plot for the last year or so that he’s getting ready to spring and Civil War is the perfect distraction for him. The rollercoaster ride is not over yet.

That’s one thing that’s struck me about Civil War that we’ve not really seen – while the heroes are busy fighting each other, you just know that the big bad guys are thing …

… yeah, what’s Doctor Doom doing right now? If I was the Fantastic Four writer I would have just done six issues about Doctor Doom, and let all the FF stuff be taken care of in Civil War. That was my one frustration with Civil War – Mark [Millar]’s doing all the big Cap Civil War action moments [in the Civil War mini-series], Brian’s doing all the big Cap Civil War emotional moments [in New Avengers], and I’m doing Captain America – what do I do? That’s why I decided to focus on the side characters and how this is affecting all of them, and then focus on Cap in the last issue, focus on Cap hunting the Red Skull and then set up everything for everything that’s coming afterwards – use Civil War as my platform to show everyone how cool the book is.

I think that’s one of the reasons that the Captain America issues have been some of the more successful Civil War tie-ins. They’ve managed to keep the sense of telling a regular story.

They really are all stand-alone issues that … if you’ve been reading Captain America they tie into everything that’s gone before, but if you were just picking those up because of the Civil War tie-in it gave you a pretty good idea of what the Cap book is about while not conflicting with Civil War. No offence to any of the other books, but when you’re doing a tie-in to a big event like that, nothing important to the big event is going to happen anywhere outside the event itself. When you see Captain America captured by Heroes for Hire you know that’s not going to be referenced in the actual Civil War, so what’s the point? ‘Oh wow they captured Cap in Heroes For Hire, I wonder how that’s going to affect Civil War?’ Well, guess what? Not at all.

I’ve got a soft spot for Diamondback, any chance of seeing her and the BAD Girls the pages of your Captain America?

Yea, there’s a chance. But I don’t have a soft spot for Diamondback.

Fair enough.

I don’t mind Diamondback, but I always thought she was too much like Catwoman and I thought it was stupid that she threw diamonds that were filled with gas and she had high heels. I liked some of the stuff with her and Cap during the [Mark] Gruenwald era – but my favourite stuff in the Gruenwald era is up until Cap #350, that’s the meat of the Gruenwald era.

Daredevil is my favourite comics character, period. Part of the fascination for me is the contradiction of being an honest lawyer by day and vigilante by night …

Yeah, he’s an honest guy, but he has a lot of issues with the truth. I mean, what he needs to do to be able to sleep at night is to lie to his father and break the promise that he made. And so he puts on a costume to do it as if that’s going to make it okay.

How do you think that Matt manages to live with that contradiction? Is that something you’ll be exploring?

I’ll explore it some degree – in a way it’s what the book has always been about and it’s key to why Bendis and a lot of other people have always said that Matt is an incredibly selfish person because – regardless of how you want to look at it – he makes decisions that hurts the people around him, he makes decisions that are antithetical to promises he made to people – he ruined Heather Glenn’s life, broke up with her on the ‘phone after making her sign her company away … He does these things and he tortures himself about it like a good Catholic would but then he lets himself off the hook which is another thing that most Catholics do. He thinks, ‘maybe this new girl is my second chance’ – when it’s like his 12th second chance.

I think that at heart he’s a really good guy but he’s got an intense desire for justice because he feels so much injustice was done to him as a child when his father was killed and in his heart he’s obsessed with that and he can’t stop being Daredevil. One of the interesting things that Kevin Smith did was when he had that scene when Karen Page told him that no matter what happens, you should never stop doing this and I thought ‘that’s interesting, because I don’t think he ever could, even if he wanted to, because it’s a compulsion, and that’s another thing that makes it … Daredevil’s a lot different to Batman. They have their similarities in that they’re driven for justice, but Batman is so much more methodical about it, where Daredevil is so much more about gut instinct. He can be with his family and friends and want to stay there and be happy in that world, but the minute that everybody else goes to sleep Matt puts on a costume and leaps off the rooftops looking for somebody to punch out because he’s hearing everything around him all the time, and he’s hearing all the time how awful people are. Whenever you think about how unjust … because there’s so many bad people in the world doing bad things all the time.

He’s the protector of his neighbourhood. He’s a real conflicted character and I think that’s why him being a catholic actually works. No-one’s more conflicted than people who are raised Catholic.

Now Daredevil’s headed back to New York. Will you be trying to put the secret identity genie back in the bottle?

It can never go all the way back, but in issue #93 … the end of issue #92 was with the death of the FBI Director guy, leaving a suicide note claiming that Matt Murdock was framed. A lot of people will believe that Matt Murdock is Daredevil, and a lot of other people will believe it was a conspiracy, especially with the whole Civil War thing going on. There’ll be a certain element – the average man on the street – that may or may not believe it but there’ll be some people who say ‘that man was totally set up, look at him, he’s blind’ and there’ll be at least some doubt, which is kind of where it was before in some ways. You can never completely cork that bottle, because it was splashed all over the tabloids and he was thrown in jail. The closest you can get to it is that legally no-one’s going after him for it; there’s now legally not a good case against him anymore. I felt that’s what I needed to be able to accomplish. Brian [Michael Bendis] took it as far as he could take it. Then I got to turn the car over one more time and take it to the next logical extreme, which was to throw him in jail and have him actually have to face the consequences of what happens when everyone knows you’re Daredevil; then the next couple of years on the book are how do you get your life back, what do you do? Sacrifices will have to be made, and at what cost to get his life back? What will he pay for trying to get that life back, trying to still be Daredevil? It’s an open secret at this point that he’s Daredevil.

It’s really just closing a door on a topic for a while – who wants every single issue to be about the exact same thing? It’s always amazing to me that fans want one thing, and then you give it to them and they complain that you gave it to them and that you should do something else instead.

What other Daredevil villains can we look forward to seeing?

Definitely the Gladiator, and I’m trying to get my hands on Ox, actually.

Ah, The Enforcers

What was the name of that group he was a part of …

The Enforcers

The Enforcers, right, I’m thinking of creating a new Enforcers group and using The Ox and a couple of other people. There’s a gang war brewing after Daredevil #93 because of what happens with The Kingpin. But I don’t want to be revealing anything. I’m introducing a thing in Hell’s Kitchen where somebody is trying to take over Hell’s Kitchen and I don’t want to reveal who that is because that’s a big secret. It’s someone I’ve been dropping hints about since the beginning of the second arc, when Matt was running about in Europe. Matt’s life is not going to get much easier just because he’s not in prison anymore.

Good. He’s one of those heroes who, as a reader, you love seeing put through the wringer, who can really take it and soak it up.

With Civil War you’ve been able to have your books slide around it and deal with it without being completely sidetracked by it; with the big X-book crossover, Uncanny’s going to be in the centre of that. How do you feel about the fact that you’re writing chunks, chapters of a larger story, rather than a story that’s all yours.

It’s kinda like working on a TV show, I think. We were out a couple of weeks ago in New York and planned out the entire event. I got to have a big hand in the structure of it and in ensuring that what was happening in my issues was the kind of thing I wanted to write. It’s one of those things where I’m really happy with it. I left for the airport sharing a cab with Mike Carey, Christopher Yost and Craig Kyle and I couldn’t believe how excited we all were about this thing.

I went in thinking ‘crossovers, I don’t know …’ and I came out thinking ‘wow this is awesome!’ What we get out of it afterwards is even more awesome, which is kind of how I feel about Civil War – the war itself is a huge slam bang superhero fight, but everything that you get after Civil War is over … that to me is the pay-off.

Civil War is making a truckload of money and Mark Millar’s can buy ten more houses but what’s excited me about Civil War from the beginning is … I know what’s happening with Spider-Man, I know what’s happening with the Avengers, I know what’s happening with Cap, I know what’s happening with Iron Man … and all of that stuff is much more interesting than what we were doing before Civil War; and we have a ton of new people looking at this stuff because of Civil War. All these books get to do some really cool stuff because of the way Civil War ends. Civil War’s a very clean earthquake and it’s like this earthquake happened – and this is what happens afterwards.

Speaking of crossovers, which characters are you looking forward to writing in the crossover that you don't normally get the chance to write, and what about those characters most appeals to you?

Emma Frost is a favorite of mine that I haven't really been able to write yet, and as funny as it is to say, Wolverine. I've been looking to do more Wolverine since he was barely in Deadly Genesis. And I wanted to use Angel in Uncanny, but couldn't figure a reason to bring him into space, you know what I mean?

Mike Carey mentioned in our recent interview with him that he's using Exodus, starting with X-Men Annual #1, and that he loves the Messianic aspects of him and how that relates to Magneto and his vision for mutantkind. You talked earlier about a faction of Morlocks being a parallel for religious extremism. Is your story also leading in to the crossover? Will the Morlocks play a significant part in the crossover?

Not necessarily, no. I'm pretty sure the Morlocks story will tie itself off in my 5 issue arc. But the themes of Mike's arc and mine both tie closely together, and that's not an accident. But I can't say anything more than.

Litterbug is an interesting Morlock to pick up on. Geoff Johns' Morlocks mini was set outside of continuity, on a significantly different Earth. Is the 616 Litterbug much different to Geoff Johns' Litterbug? What about the character appealed to you?

No, it's basically the same character. I just really liked his look, and the idea that he's this really smart guy, a genuis, who's basically turned into a giant cockroach. I'm trying to play up the horrific angle of the Morlocks where I can.

The X-Men seem to have a shortage of major villains compared with, say, The Avengers. Why do you think new enemies find it hard to take with readers? If - and I know this is a big if - Vulcan's to be a long-time thorn in the X-Men's side, what will make him stick where so many others have come and gone?

God, I don't know. I don't think any villain that's a classic that anyone knew would be a classic when they were created. It's all a crapshoot.

Some quick word association - what first comes to mind?

Morlocks - Grim, vomit.

Caliban - Caliban

Marrow - Yuck

Lilandra - Helen of Troy

The Phoenix Force - Scary, confusing.

Karen Page - Heathcliff and Cathie

Milla - An accident waiting to happen, disguised as a life raft

The Black Widow (Natasha Romanov) - Sexy

Colossus - uhh....

Uncanny X-Men #500 - Oh shit.  That's coming up, isn't it?

If there was a sudden shift at Marvel and they said to you that you could only continue writing of the books you currently write, and no others, which book would you choose?

I have to quit all my other books? In that case I’m writing my lawyer, not a comic. Honestly, I couldn’t choose at this point. It would be easier for them to rip Uncanny from my hands than any other at this point, just because I think I have a much bigger attachment to Daredevil, Captain America and Iron Fist, but they’re going to have to kill me to get any of my books away from me at this point.