Interviews

Managing editor Ian Murphy talks to X-Factor , Fallen Angel and Dark Tower: The Gunslinger writer Peter David

Read Part 1 here

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LWW: One of the things I loved about your previous run on X-Factor was your handling of Quicksilver and the way you explained his impatience as being the result of his living his life at superspeed …

PD: I got so much positive reaction to that. People wrote in and said that they had hated Quicksilver for thirty years and in a three-page sequence they all of a sudden completely understood him. Everyone wrote in and talked about being stood behind someone trying to use a cash machine; curiously no-one wrote in and copped to being the person who doesn't know how to use a cash machine, which I found kinda interesting … go figure that.

Quicksilver's in a completely different situation now. What can we expect to see from him in future issues of X-Factor ?

Oh, yeah, he's going to be a major player in an upcoming story that I'm doing. I'm almost playing him like he's the Hannibal Lector of the story. He always … he's really almost the anti-thesis of Layla, which is why they are each others respective nemesis', because he has plenty of time to think and to plan and you never quite know where he's coming from, which is probably the reason he and Layla play off each other, because they are so similar, and thus despise each other.

The core X-books are all approaching a time of change, especially to their rosters. Can we expect any change to X-Factor's line-up, any new faces?

There will be some new faces in the book, to remain consistent to the title thus far, we will have at least one new face who I will absolutely guarantee you is a B if not a C-list character. God forbid we want to have anyone who people are actually interested in reading about.

I don't suppose you're able to tell me who that's going to be?

Able to? Of course I'm able to!

Willing?

I'm not going to.

Point taken, I'm sorry.

No, no, it's fine. I love grammar. Do you watch that TV series Extras with Ricky Gervais? Did you see the one with Daniel Radcliffe? … There's a sequence where he's sitting in a restaurant with Ricky Gervais and he pulls out a condom, unwrapped … and he stretches it … and he snaps it and it fires out of his hand and he turns around and the angle round reveals Diana Rigg on the next booth with the condom on her head and he says “Can I have my johnny back?” and she says “ May I have my johnny back” …

Thinking of Deadpool's history with Siryn, would you like to use him in X-Factor ?

Initially I wasn't that interested in it but because so many people have asked about it and because of his history with Siryn I am actually toying with the idea of bringing him in, not as any kind of regular character but maybe as a guest-star for an issue or two.

But Shatterstar won't be coming in any time soon. People keep asking about Shatterstar, guys, he really doesn't fit in with … the guy with big pigsticker on his back just doesn't fit with what we're doing here. No plans for Shatterstar.

Is the Monet/Siryn/Madrox's dupes love triangle over as a sub-plot?

Oh no, we're going to see more developments.

You're not letting him off the hook that easy?

Oh no. No no no, we're going to have some serious developments as a result.

There's the big X-book crossover coming down the line, which is the second crossover to hit X-Factor in it's first 20-24 issues. Do you find these stories help or hinder your writing of X-Factor ?

Kind of both. The fortunate thing is that I have enough time, enough warning that I'm able to make things mesh seamlessly, as opposed to the old days where it would be ‘okay, next month we're going to be doing a crossover' and I would be caught flat-footed because I would have storylines under way and things progressing and all of a sudden I'd have to backburner everything I was doing for three months because it's a crossover. Most of the stuff that's happened thus far has been events occurring in the Marvel Universe which impact on X-Factor , and I've had total freedom to decide how these things are going to affect our characters and to plant seeds for future stories. For instance, if it weren't for the Civil War and Registration Act I wouldn't have had the opportunities to so easily introduce Jamie Madrox, Agent of SHIELD, which then led in to the two-parter that I'm doing in #14 and 15.

There are a number of great personal connections between your X-Factor cast and characters that are on the other X-teams. Will you have the opportunity to play with some of those, such as Wolfsbane and Mystique, M and Emma Frost, Siryn and Cable …

That's gonna really rear it's head in the upcoming crossover. I like the Wolfsbane and Mystique thing but but there's nothing I'm wildly anticipating. I'm much more interested in the character interaction that I've introduced in to X-Factor and that we're exploring there. I like the idea of having X-Factor fairly self-contained when it comes to character interaction. I'm not a big fan of bringing in all kinds of character interaction from all kinds of other books and dragging it all over the place, I like to remain focused wherever possible; plus some of these interactions are so tangled through years of twisted continuity that sometimes it's better to stay away from it.

Do you find Mystique's denial that she murdered [Wolfsbane's foster Mother and long-time X-ally] Moira believable? Do you think she has plausible deniability?

I think it's the age-old tradition of a writer saying I think that's stupid, I think that's out of character, that doesn't fit with my plans, and so they brush off what another writer did, and if you've been in this industry long enough you've pretty much learned to take that sort of thing in your stride, unless you're John Byrne and you take it unbelievably personally and nurse grudges about it forever; but other than that it's pretty much SOP.

What's your perspective on it, do you see Mystique as Moira's killer?

I really don't have any opinion on it whatsoever, it's something I've given absolutely no thought to. The important thing is that Wolfsbane thinks of Mystique as Moira's killer.

There's been mention that you'll be writing about a group of depowered mutants …

The X-Cell. I called them something else and then didn't like what I came up with so I ended up calling them the X-Cell.

What's their motivation for coming together?

It goes back to what we were talking about in terms of things having real world roots. The concept stems from … when AIDS first started up, when AIDS reared its ugly head, there was a theory, a conspiracy theory floating about, that AIDS was in fact a virus that was being developed to kill the enemy or kill gays or whatever and that this was actually something that the government was behind and I thought wouldn't it be interesting if the same sort of logic was applied to M-Day. Remember, people don't know, generally, why this happened, and in the absence of real knowledge fake knowledge starts cropping up and I thought it would be interesting to have a group of former mutants convinced that M-Day was a result of some sort of secret government plan of secret government weapon which, if you think about it – particularly when you consider subsequent events involving the Super Hero Registration Act seems to form part of a pattern, that the government is endeavouring to crack down on all beings who have super powers – so I figured that Civil War and the Registration Act would only act to the mentality, to the conspiracy theory belief that the government was behind the events of M-day.

The logic of the X-Cell is simple: if the government was capable of taking away their powers then the government is equally capable of restoring their powers and so they embark on a terrorist campaign against the government to try and convince the government to go public with the fact that they removed the mutant powers and that they will pledge to restore them. To my mind it flows from two aspects of the real world, AIDS and terrorism. On that basis I felt this concept would have some real world relevance. I like the idea of messing with people's heads by coming up with a group of terrorists whose motivations are 100% understandable, and you feel for them, you feel for their frustration and for what they're going through, and of course the irony is that you know their concerns are wrong-headed.

What familiar faces can we look forward to seeing as part of the X-Cell?

I don't know if I want to say, because I don't want to give away … I will say that one of the members is Callisto.

Oh, wow!

Yea, I figured that would make you happy.

Given your understandable hesitation in releasing the names of X-Cell members right now, how has the proliferation of information, speculation etc. across the internet affected the way that you write?

I don't think it's affected the way that I write but it's certainly affected the way I release information. It's unbelievably frustrating because … surprise is probably the strongest tool in the writer's toolbox and the internet is almost designed, it seems, to destroy that element of surprise. Instead word gets out way before it should, and not only are surprises and major storey points blown but a lot of what you do … the way that it comes across stems entirely from it's execution and I can tell you that it is incredibly frustrating as a writer to see some semi-literate schmuck describe the upcoming event sin a book in about as inane and inept a way as could possibly be described and then conclude with ‘wow that really sucks' and the next thing you know everyone is sitting in judgement on this book that won't even be on the stands for two months, or even a few weeks, and it becomes frustrating because … if someone reads a story of mine and they don't like the story, okay, fine, you know what? You can't make everybody happy all the time. That's impossible. I don't mind people rendering judgement on a story they've read. I mind it when they render judgement based upon an incredibly inept, badly written summary. That is incredibly frustrating.

And even a plot summary itself tells you so little about how it's actually done – there are any number of movies about serial killers or summer romances that on paper can sound so ‘oh, we've seen it before, there's nothing new about that' but the execution can make a common idea blindingly good.

Look at Raiders of the Lost Arc : on paper it's a story about an archaeologist who has some sort of illicit affair with a woman when she was underage, everything he ever gets his hands on he loses, the story climaxes with a bluff that doesn't work and he gets tied to a stake, helpless, and God saves his ass. That doesn't sound particularly compelling – but is anyone going to deny that Raiders of the Lost Arc is one of the most compelling, great movies? No, but not based on what could have been on the internet.

Another example that I've used is … cast your mind back, do you remember Amazing Spider-Man #100?

<pause while Ian racks his brain!> No.

Were you reading comic books at that time?

I wasn't, no, sorry

At the end of Amazing …

Ohhh!

Now you remember it?

This is the issue with the extra arms, yes!

He grows four additional arms in an endeavour to try and cure himself of his Spider-powers. It winds up backfiring and he grows four extra arms. Now, I read this book, and I was 13 or 14, and my reaction when it got to the end was “He's grown four extra arms, what's going to happen now?!” I couldn't wait for the next issue. If you do that story now and I'm a 13 year old kid and I'm on the internet, the first thing is I wind up reading about it ahead of time and I spend the next few months seeing older fans saying ‘it's the most stupid idea ever, it's bad, it's ridiculous. How could he possibly get the additional muscle mass to grow four extra arms from a formula that he drank? Marvel is out of ideas, it will never last, it will last for an issue or two at most, it's idiotic, Stan Lee has completely lost his mind' and on and on and on, negative negative negative, to the point at which by the time the book came out I probably wouldn't even read it, I'd have stopped reading Spider-Man by that time. I would have been convinced by all the older fans that this was completely moronic.

Now, point of fact, it was completely moronic, make no bones about it. I can tell you that at age 50 if I read that I'd be ‘you gotta be kidding me, come on” but back then comic books were aimed at 13 year olds and I was the target audience for that development and as a result it hit me exactly the way it was supposed to and as the writers had intended. Nowadays the writers intent becomes lost in the incredible drive to not only spread the word about stuff that's coming out but render judgement upon it, be the first person to state an opinion, even though your opinion is completely and utterly worthless and as a writer I find that an anathema to entertainment. I don't call them spoilers, I call them ruiners. It's one thing if a television show, for instance, has already aired and you want to discuss the television show, and you want to discuss the show so you post ‘okay, I'm going to be discussing specifics of the show so spoilers are here, in case you haven't seen it. That's one thing, it's very different from what I call ruiners, which are postings that come out before the product has even hit the stands, that are designed not for the purpose of critical commentary but are posted purely for the purpose of blowing the end of the story. I see absolutely no point in it and it's just … to my mind it's a despicable practice.

Thinking of Indiana Jones, if licensing rights weren't an issue and you could insert any character from pop culture into X-Factor for an issue, what kind of characters would you like to use in that way?

Oh, Doc Savage, I like Doc Savage. I have no idea how given the timeframe is considerably wrong, but Doc Savage … and maybe The Shadow would be cool, one of those pulp characters.

I don't mean to be rude but are we almost done, because I have to work and we've been talking for an hour

I understand. If I can wrap up with just a couple of quick questions then.

Okay.

Dark Tower: The Gunslinger. The title sounds like it's an origin story for the character, is it? If I've never read any Stephen King, if I've never read any Dark Tower, will that hurt my enjoyment of it?

Yes. Stephen King has said himself that in comic book terms this would be considered the origin. It is very carefully designed to be as accessible as humanly possible, so not in the least.

They've just announced that there's going to be a World War Hulk/X-Men mini in the offing. What team of current X-characters would you select if you were sending them off to fight the Hulk and try to control him?

It would depend on which characters I wanted to kill off, so I don't think I'm going to answer on that basis. If I was going to send anybody up against the Hulk … let's see … Monet has telekinesis, right? I would probably send in Monet if for no other reason than I'd pull the same stunt Marvel Girl did, which is to use her power to telekinetically slaw the Hulk's eyelids shut so that you can then come at him from all different directions and he can't see anything.

What character that you haven't yet written would you love to have the chance to write?

I really like Thor at this point, I used him in a couple of issues of Captain Marvel and found that I really liked the character a lot more than I thought.

If I could just end with a little quick-fire word association:

Hulk – The strongest one there is

Supergirl – Cancelled. No, can I revise that to Fallen Angel ?

Monet – the bitch is back

Wolfsbane – sweet

Colossus – Colossus? Sure, Colossus. Big

With Supergirl – is that something you were definitely looking to do with Fallen Angel when it was a DC book? Were the rumours right about that?

All I'm going to say is that anyone who's a fan of my work on Supergirl should read Fallen Angel numbers #14-16

Discuss the interview here on the LiveWire Forums

Archived Interviews:
31st Jan 2007: Peter David Part 1
31st Jan 2007: Ed Brubaker Part 3
31st Jan 2007: Ed Brubaker Part 2
31st Jan 2007: Ed Brubaker Part 1
22 Jan 2007: Mike Carey Part 1
22 Jan 2007: Mike Carey Part 2.