I recently got a chance to speak with Matt Fraction. Fraction is part of the writing team that revitalized Marvel Comics‘ Iron Fist. He’s recently started writing Ma

THE COMIC BOOK GUY: First off, I wanted to ask you about “Thor: Ages of Thunder.” Is that something that came up spontaneously or something that you were moving towards?

MATT FRACTION: I never— and people might argue that I still don’t — but I never understood Thor. It was one of those characters where I never quite got it. And early on in my relationship with Marvel I told my editors there, “Oh hey, I’m not the guy to talk to about a Thor mini-series.” I very specifically remember saying that, because I didn’t get the character. It was all thees and thous and I just didn’t get it.
But then I got it.

I was at inker and writer extraordinaire Andy Parks’ house, and Andy has an original (Jack) Kirby Thor page. And something about looking at that page — and it’s not even a particularly spectacular Thor page, I think you could argue, as far as Thor pages go — but there was something about seeing it in its raw form like that. I suddenly got it in a way that I never had before.

And then I started bugging Warren Simons, the Thor editor who’s my editor on “Iron Fist,” “Iron Man” and a couple of other things with ideas. Things like, “Oh hey, you know what’d be cool in Thor, an army of skeletons while it rained blood.” You know what I mean? Just all these rediculous ideas would come into my head and I’d just throw them out there because — well because I’m a jerk I guess. (both laugh)

Eventually it came to a point where, it wasn’t a conscious audition but it was kind of auditioning for a mini-series. Then the opportunity came along to do this and I was like, “Sweet! Finally I get to put all my stupid ideas in one place.”

So it’s a chance to do Thor as I understood it as I had my sort of revelation about him. Sort of a, “This is the greatness that I see about Thor.”

TCBG: So you kind of move toward him once you understood him.

MattF: Once I understood him I couldn’t imagine not telling Thor stories. Once I had, experienced the character for the first time, it was I could do not to think about it.

TCBG: And “Ages of Thunder” is kind of a good introduction to people who aren’t used to it. It does a good job of letting you know what he is. Which is Thor is a gods ass kicker.

MattF: Yeah, I mean they don’t give thunder to the lightweights. (both laugh)

TCBG: Well, beyond that, you now have the Secret Invasion Thor. What can we expect out of that.

MattF: In the main Thor book Thor has sort of, as the Asgardians do, they’ve regenerated themselves post Ragnorok. And part of this is Thor wanting all of the gods, not to ascribe motive, but sort of to reconnect the gods with man. He’s positioned them in rural Oklahoma. And so the problem is, that these Skrulls are coming and they don’t just want to fight they want to save man. They’re sort of Skrull crusaders in a way, there’s a religious aspect, there’s an aspect of faith to their war. And so they’re going to come for gods. And Thor, buy putting Asgard in rural Oklahoma has endangered the very people that he sort of wanted to honor.

So it’s Thor realizing that the Skrulls are coming and he has a town to protect. He has two towns in that he has Asgard and this town of mortals that never did, well, “they never did nothin.’” So it’s Thor facing a war on two fronts. It’s Thor trying to protect Asgard and Thor trying to defend this town.

TCBG: And is that the reason that Thor’s not wrapped up with the God Squad that Hercules is sort of leading?

MattF: Well, it’s not necissarily the reason but…Let me not answer that because I don’t want to step on anyones anything. But all will be revealed.

TCBG: Well, along those lines, is “Invincible Iron Man” going to tie into Secret Invasion in any way?

MattF: Well the first arc is pre-Secret Invasion and then the second storyline is post-Secret Invasion. There are absolutely repercussions and ramafications. The Secret Invasion is going to have a very profound effect on the story but Secret Invasion is so big, it’s kind of its own thing. So the second storyline deals with the ramafications.
The Secret Invasion comes in between and the status quo has changed between the first arc and the second arc. It’ll all make sense in the reading.

You don’t have to know anything about Secret Invasion to read “Invincible Iron Man.”

TCBG: I was asking because Iron Man is really at the core here.

MattF: Exactly. And that’s the thing, he’s such a major character in Secret Invasion that to do a tie-in would be superfluous.

TCBG: Well, in that regard he was also a major character in Civil War and so you had to have come into this while everybody hated Iron Man.

MattF: Yeah, that was really one of the reasons that I wanted it.

TCBG: Oh really?

MattF: Yeah, I really aggressively wanted it. He’s so hated, he’s so despised, he’s so damaged at this point. He’s held in such low regard that he’s just a great character to write.

TCBG: Well, do you think that was warranted?

MattF: Um, I don’t think it’s my place to say that people were right or wrong for people to react to stories the way they reacted. Brian did that terrific, “The Confession” story where Tony still thinks he made the right decision but the price was too great and he wouldn’t make it again. That’s what’s important to know.

MattF: So I don’t think it’s necisarily warranted, I think he’s gotten a bad rap. So what I’m really looking forward to doing is reminding people who Iron Man is and why he’s a hero worthy of their love and admiration.

TCBG: And how do you see him as a character, other than being worth of love and adoration?

MattF: He’s fantastic as a character. As a hero he’s a cross between Robert Moses and Chuck Yeager with a little bit of James Bond thrown in. So as a hero he’s terrific, as a man he’s direly flawed. He is his own arch enemy, and there’s no end to the great stuff that comes with that. He’s infinitely complex without even getting out of bed.

It’s just a great character to write.

TCBG: So did you fall for the character as Iron Man or as Tony Stark?

MattF: I think a little from column A and a little from column B. I thik iron Man is always going to be easy to like but Tony Stark is just as fascinating.

I said earlier that he was on a redemption arc and it got interpreted to mean redemption for Civil War. But no, he needs to be redeemed for a lifetime of sins. His flaws run deep and to his core and go back years. Lest we forget, this is a weapons manufacturer. And that’s really what it’s all about. He’s dealing with the unfortunate aspect of his legacy, in a very real way.

Once he’s put these terrors in the world, someone is going to make them better. And by better I mean more terrifying.

Oppenheimer would weep if he could saw the capability of hydrogen bombs today.

TCBG: And that is one of the things that I saw in the teaser that Joe Quesada put out.

MattF: One of the things that this guy seems to be dealing with is that, even just his Iron Man armor, he’s put out some really amazing weaponry, that a lot of people have gotten a hold of.

Yeah, and tweaked. You’re not allowed to say, “Nobody touch my stuff.” You can’t really do that and it, again, speaks to the core flaw in his character. Tony Stark thinks that the world revolves around him. In his weakest moments he thinks he can control the world and ultimately he can’t.

I think that comes in. I think somewhere you referred to him as being like Bill Gates and if you look to what MicroSoft has put out, it really lends itself too that. In that technology is always evolving.

Yeah, that whole thing was misquoted and miscontextualized. That metaphor was to explain why he’s losing. He’s this sort of bloated tyrant of the 20th century and he’s faced with a 21st century for the first time. And that’s not necissarily casting aspersions on those whose methodologies differ from his or Bill Gates. It’s just that, Tony Stark isn’t going to survive in the 21st century playing by the rules of the 20th century. And that really is what he’s coming to realize in our first “Invincible” storyline. He’s starting to realize that he’s a bit of a dinosaur and he needs to evolve, he needs to up his game.

TCBG: I think remember when Warren Ellis moved onto Iron Man, he made mention of the fact that he had cell phones that could do as much as Iron Man’s armor could, that they’d never really upgraded the armor in that time.

MattF: Right, but I mean, the armor costs like $4 billion so it’s not like you could armor the entire police force of Paducah, Kentucky in Iron Man suits.

But there are real questions he starts to wonder. Like at one point he’s released a little bomb swarm and he’s wondering, “Can we create airborn vaccines? Can I like fly over Africa with vaccines like a cropduster?” So he’s wondering, “How far can we push this.” It’s one of the thing that we’re playing with for his character. It’s not, “is this strong enough to fight Fing Fang Foom?” Now it’s like, “Hey, how do I fight AIDS in Africa? There’s a villian. How do you do that? How do you fight hunger?”

I mean for all his accomplishments, he’s still a weapons designer at his core, and I’m trying to get him back to the daydreaming inventor in a lot of ways.

TCBG: And actually, I visited your blog and saw your mention of that misquote but where I saw it it felt more like MicroSoft versus Linux where, like with windows, they just keep pilling stuff into it where Linux is pretty streamlined.

MattF: It empowers the user. It’s about user empowerment. If you read the whole quote, I think it’s clear. If you read the portion that that [person] took out of context, that turned into this headache that I had to deal with. But the thing is, what happens when you meet someone who thinks that the Iron Man shouldn’t be piloted by one guy and shouldn’t cost $4 billion. And that’s what this guy — and sure he’s a genocidal terrorist — but he’s applying open source or his understanding of open source philosophy towards terror. And that’s a foe for Iron Man to fight because he’s antithetical to everything Iron Man stands for.

I’m not saying that MicroSoft is good and Linux is bad, I’m saying MicroSoft is old. MicroSofts business practices are old, the philosophy.

TCBG: Sort of the swarm or acting like a hammer instead of a scalpel.

MattF: Yeah. The name of the first “Invincible Iron Man” issue is “The Five Nightmares” and it’s all about Tony Stark talking about his five nightmares. And it’s all, “The Iron Man is going to be come cheap, the Iron Man is going to become disposable, other people will be able to pilot the Iron Man other than me so I won’t have control over the Iron Man and lastly someone’s going to do this without me. And these all come true in the first issue.

TCBG: That’s pretty funny because all of those nightmares are pretty narcissistic.

MattF: Exactly. Exactly, it’s classic alcoholic behavior. Tony is really a dry drunk at the moment.

TCBG: Yeah, and putting him in charge of S.H.I.E.L.D. is sort of like handing him keys and a bottle.

MattF: Yeah, these are very real things that he’s dealing with.

And yeah this entire MicroSoft/Linux thing just infuriated me. Just because it was such a deliberate miscontextualization. If you read the issue, it’s clear it’s not true but no one’s going to read the issue. It just became a thing that I had to deal with.

TCBG: And it’s something I’m noticing these days that even the proximity of a photo to a story can change things and take them out of context.

MattF: Yeah and he absolutely didn’t say what was being said. It was great for that guy, that guy wound up getting a bunch of hits and a bunch of referrals and everything else. And I got a bunch of angry people and suddenly I had to justify shit that I never said.

But that aside, what’s important is that philosophically the “Invincible Iron Man” is Tony realizing he’s got to evolve, he can’t run like a technological Plutocrat. As a hero, as a man, as a businessman, as an engineer, as a designer, as a futurist, he’s been living in the past and needs to develop. And he finally meets someone whose beating him at a game he was never designed to play.

TCBG: Like you said earlier, it seems the Iron Man armor gets more powerful and addresses specific foes and such. But it’s one of the things where it’s not really addressing the problem he’s looking at symptoms as the problem.

MattF: He’s just making the weapon stronger, he’s not making it any smarter. He’s not designed to fight an asymmetrical war, and when he finally comes across someone that’s fighting him on those terms, he’s at a loss.

TCBG: And one of the things to come out of those preview pages is that (Zebediah) Stane doesn’t think he’s a bad guy.

MattF: Oh yeah. He’s nationless, he’s loyalless, he…well he does lack the ‘right and wrong’ gland that most people have. I mean he is a villain, he is a bad guy, but yeah, he thinks he’s just trying to make a living, y’know.

TCBG: Well, and I think the best villains, that’s one of the things about them. I remember a friend and I were discussing Dr. Doom one time and I said that ultimately, the best thing about Doom is that he doesn’t think he’s doing anything wrong. He honestly believes that the world will be a better place when he’s in charge.

MattF: Sure, he’s a benevolent monarch. He believes he’s a benevolent monarch.

TCBG: So the movie is coming out at the same time as the book. What do you think of what you’ve seen of the movie?

MattF: I’m excited. I’m the guy in comics that doesn’t really like comic book movies. I don’t dislike them, but I’m not as impressed. I tend to dislike them more than my coworkers. But I saw that first trailer right after San Diego (Comicon) last year. I was in a room with a bunch of other X-Men writers. We were exhausted. We were tired of comics. We were tired of each other. Everyone just wanted to go home and sleep for a week and we turned up at the Marvel West offices and they were like, ‘Hey, let’s watch … let’s show you this ‘Iron Man’ Super Bowl reel.’ And they showed us the clip and we all just yelled and went nuts and we just wanted to see it. I was genuinely enthused, and that was before I was writing the book.

TCBG: Well, that was one of the things. If you look at the movie, it seems to be doing about the same thing you are in that it’s looking at Tony Stark and looking at his realization that he has an awful legacy at this point.

MattF: Yeah.

TCBG: Ok, this is going to be kind of a goofy question but I kind of have to ask. Tony Stark is pretty heavily known as a womanizer in Marvel Comics, is this something that’s going to be addressed?

MattF: Yes. It’s like a superpower. He’s great. It’s going to be celebrated. Is that what you mean by addressed?

TCBG: Well yeah, that and if there would be repercussions from it.

MattF: Yeah. He’s in bed with a woman on page four of the book. Like very. I mean, repercussions, yeah, inadvertently there’s a huge repercussion.

But yeah, I love it. It’s one of my favorite things about Tony. I mean he’s in bed with a naked woman by page four or five or something.

TCBG: See listing it as a superpower just cracks me up.

MattF: It’s kind of thing like to me, it’s mostly what I responded to with James Bond. I love Bond as a character but it’s not the super spy stuff, although that’s great, it’s not the action, although that’s great, it’s that Bond always knows what to do in any situation socially. That was always exciting and fascinating to me as a kid.

To be the kind of insecure preteen/teenager and then to watch a guy that looks great in a tuxedo, order the right bottle of wine, sit down at a back baccarat table and win $20,000 and then like nail Ringo Starr’s wife. It was always sort of like g__damn that is incredible. That’s a superpower. That’s what I always loved about Bond was Bond knowing absolutely the right thing to say at any given time. And I want to play that up with Tony is that Tony can’t help but just be that cool.

TCBG: Well there was an interview with Marilu Henner on Jimmy Kimmel, where they brought up Gene Simmons’ constant flirting and she said, that’s just Gene. If Gene were here and no one else was he’d be flirting with the table.

MattF: Yeah, exactly.

TCBG: I’m really looking forward to the comic, it looks like a lot of fun. And Stane is definitely taking a different tactic with Stark than his predecessors have.

MattF: Yeah, I mean he doesn’t want to kill Iron Man. I mean he does, but his ultimate objective isn’t like “mwaha ha ha, you know. His objective is, “I want to prove that you’re obsolete.”

He wants to drive Stark to extinction. That’s what he’s about. And I think that’s something that we haven’t seen before. It’s not, “I’m going to punch you. I mean, I’m going to kill you. Don’t get me wrong. But I want to be the extinction level event that wipes you off the face of the Earth.”

TCBG: And like you said that is a whole new way to look at it. In the past it’s been using a bigger stick.

MattF: Yeah, “My robot can beat up your robot.” But this is a battlefield where Stark has never been challenged on. That’s the basis for the, albeit specious, MiroSoft/Linux analogy. MicroSoft was never designed to face something like Linux.

Not Linux, but the open source movement. The creative commons license is like the bubonic plague to an organization like that, that prides itself on locking down rights and proprietary information. Something like open source is a revolutionary act, so Stark is faced with a revolutionary villain, on the surface.

TCBG: Thanks a lot for your time.

MattF: Sure. Tell Joe I said hi. Take care

TCBG: You too.

I recently got a chance to interview Marvel Comics Editor-in-chief Joe Quesada. We spoke of a number of things happening in the Marvel Universe and in the latest Marvel film, Iron Man.

THE COMIC BOOK GUY: First off, you pretty early on seem to have taken, kind of an adversarial role with DC Comics. You kind of called them out, mostly like trash talking on a basketball court. Was this a conscious effort?

JOE QUESADA: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. By the way I made a pretty public statement pretty early on, before I got in to any schoolyard thing with DC. A sort of a malaise had fallen over the (comic book) industry and I remembered back when I was reading comics just as a hardcore fan was that there was sort of a battle line drawn in the sand. There were the DC people the Marvel people and a few that read both but there were tons of arguments. Like DC fans didn’t like Marvel fans and vice versa. And there was a definite rivalry between the companies.

It was a lot of fun, and at the end of the day you can’t have the New York Yankees without the Boston Red Sox. That sort of a rivalry just makes baseball more exciting.

So I felt that the rivalry needed to be sparked up a little bit. So I did a little bit of teasing and prodding more like what Stan Lee did back in the day. Back then he used to call them the Distinguished Competition and Brand X. so it was keeping in the tradition.

And lo and behold fans woke up and DC woke up a little bit so, I think competition is great. I think passion is a good thing. Specifically fandom. Passion among the fandom is, and by the was if passion means some fans say they hate the guy at Marvel because he’s saying mean things, that’s passion, you know. Have at it. That’s great, So long as you’re passionate about it, that’s great.

CBG: So knowing that this was coming, did you really early on resign yourself to that?

JOEQ: What’s that?

TCBG: The idea that you would be hated.

JOEQ: Oh yeah. One of the clearest things that anyone ever said to me when I took over this job was when Tom DeFalco, editor-in-chief before the guy that I took over this job, came into my office and Tom did this job for a long time. So he told me, “Just be aware that you need a really broad back to do this job. Because no matter how good your intentions are there will always be people who are going to see conspiracies where there are none. And going to blame you for things that are totally out of your control.”

So knowing that, and now having experienced that, I can increase circulation and improve the books a thousand-fold - and I think we’ve done a pretty good job of that - but there’s always going to be people that are going to say, “He sucks.”

And that’s just fandom you know. I mean I’m a fan of comics, of sports and it just comes with the territory. Fans are very passionate. So you can either take it or you can’t, it just comes with the job.

To use another sports metaphor, there are people who say that certain athletes can’t play in New York because the fandom is just too passionate. And there may be some truth to that, but some of them can and do.

So knowing that, it was a simple decision to make.

TCBG: With that already behind you, that kind of feel for your job, does it make it easier to do something like “Brand New Day” where you know it will anger some of the fans?

JOEQ: Brand New Day was a bandage that had to be ripped off sooner or later. This isn’t something that just occurred to us here and we said, “We think it’ll work better to have him like this.”

This is something that every editor that I know of, every one for the last 10, 12, 15 years has wanted to unmarry Peter Parker again. And they either didn’t have that solution or they weren’t ready to do that yet because you knew that there would be a backlash from a certain segment of fans.

But one of the things that I try and advocate around here is that we do not publish in fear. We can’t. Once you start staring into the rear-view mirror you’re going to end up in an accident.

And Brand New Day was one of those things where we could easily have sat back and said, “Oh, I don’t want to get all those e-mails.” but at the you know what, it was what was best for that character in the long run. So let’s just do it. Lets get it over and done with.
To me, One More Day was less important, to me it was more important to get to Brand New Day. And I get tons of fan mail telling me, “I didn’t really like One More Day but now I’m loving Brand New Day and I understand why you did it.”

That’s really the ultimate goal and two years down the road, five years down the road, no one’s going to care. So long as we keep putting out good stories.

TCBG: Right. And I was one of those fans where it really bothered me. I mean Spidey is what brought me into comics. But the stories in Brand New Day have been really solid.

JOEQ: And there’s so much more we can do with Spider-Man that you can’t do with him married dot Mary Jane. We haven’t even scratched the surface we haven’t had any real romance brought up in the book. But there’s stuff coming down the pike where I just want to tell everybody what’s coming but I just can’t.

I also think that, at the end of the day, one of the things that has lots of the fans upset is, “How does this fit into my Marvel continuity world.”

Those answers are coming, we didn’t want to give them away right away. But those answers are coming don’t even panic. Believe it or not, it’s all under control.

TCBG: And you just mentioned romance right now. I don’t know if it’s how you guys are thinking of it but to me it felt like it was a conscious decision not to have any romance right away because it would kind of be like seeing a friend that just recently got divorced with someone else. It just kind of feels weird.

JOEQ: Oh yeah no, that’s absolutely true. Part of it is also, lets clear the deck, lets clear the air, we’re introducing a new cast. Lets let the writers have their way with it. Who does Pete meet, who does Peter run into, who does Peter have a crush on and who does he fall out of a crush on. It’s just letting that happen organically with our writers instead of being like, he’s going to date her, he’s going to break up with her.

And it’s part of the deccision to give the old Spider-Man villains a break, we’re introducing a lot of new villains. Not that Spidey’s villains aren’t great and we will bring them back, it’s just that they’ve been used so much lately. And not just with Spider-Man, throughout the Marvel Universe. So we just want to give them a break for a little while and bring on new characters and make the cast even bigger and thus the soap opera even bigger. So I’ve been pretty happy with the way that these guys have been taking the books.

It’s also part of taking the books thrice monthly and a single title instead of three separate titles. Bringing back what made Spider-Man so great, what made Marvel so great was there’s one life, Peter Parker and the other part of his life if the Amazing Spider-Man. So we’re really looking at the soap opera of this guys life.

TCBG: You mentioned the term soap opera and I think that’s really been done on Ultimate Spider-Man where you’re really involved in this guys life. If the Spider stuff happens of it doesn’t happen, you’re still engaged as a reader.

JOEQ: Exactly. And remember the first six issues, there was no costume and you were just engaged in the life of Peter Parker.

And that shows you that what I’ve always been saying is true. You need to care about the guy in the red and blue suit. You have to care about Peter Parker to care about Spider-Man, you need to care about Matt Murdock to care about Daredevil. They’re their alter-egos first and the superhero second.

TCBG: And that’s been coming up a lot with the reviews of Iron Man. Most of the reviewers have pointed out that it’s a long time before you ever see the suit.

JOEQ: Let me tell you, as a guy that’s seen the film about a dozen times at this point. From the very first iteration of the film, I keep telling people, “I don’t care if he ever puts on the suit.” Because Robert Downey Jr. just does such a great job of capturing Tony Stark. He does such an incredible job of making this multi-dimensional man that becomes this hero that the suit is secondary. You just want to see more Downey Jr. He really nailed what it is to be a Marvel hero, right at it’s heart.

TCBG: How did you feel about that casting when you found out?

JOEQ: I loved it. I absolutely loved it.

First of all, I happen to be a huge fan of his. So much so that I even watched Alley MacBeal to watch him. (both laugh)

So I was thrilled when I heard it. And it really was art imitating life at that point because in a lot of ways he’s lived the life of Tony Stark.

TCBG: And the whole cast if phenomenal. The lead cast has about 7 Oscar nominations among them?

JOEQ: Oh yeah, and I’ll go on record saying this. Aside from Downy doing an incredible job in this, it’s the first tie that I’ve seen a romance on the screen of a superhero movie that really touched me. Where I was like, “OK, I really feel this.”

There’s just some sort of a magic between him and Gwyneth Paltrow (as his personal assistant Pepper Potts) that really touched me.

TCBG: And that’s one of the places where the movie can feel outside of the standard context of the book. There’s been romance between Tony and Pepper in the past but it’s never seemed like it could last.

JOEQ: And it’s funny that they should nail this particular romance because the Pepper Pots Tony Stark romance isn’t like Peter and Mary Jane, Peter and Gwen, Clark and Lois, you know, it’s not a classic comic book romance. And yet they managed to take something like that and make is something really special.

Where Robert Downey Jr. has really captured the essence of the character, I think what Gwyneth Paltrow has done for us is that she’s given us a new look at Pepper Potts. Where we’re really looking at this going, “Wow.” this could be the case where an actor playing a character on the screen will probably effect the comic books because she she gave us a look at Pepper that we never saw before. We see her in the flesh now and I think that, invariably, will effect the way writers write her in the future.

TCBG: The movie has the modern Iron Man suit but I was wondering if at any point the Ultimate Iron Man suit was considered?

JOEQ: You know, that’s more of a question for our West Coast guys. The development guys and (director Jon) Favreau. What I do know is that Arnie Granoff, who was drawing Iron Man for quite a while was asked to design the suit. So I think they were looking at the standard version but that’s really a question for those guys.

TCBG: Sure. Speaking of the Ultimate Iron Man, there’s a few things in the Ultimate storyline there are elements of Tony Stark that makes him seem more tragic than in the standard storyline. Is something like that that is coming in the standard storyline?

JOEQ: In “Invincible Iron Man” we’re going to be revealing a lot of stuff about Tony. It won’t resemble Ultimates, it’ll be different, but there’s some stuff coming out about Tony that I think will reveal a lot.

TCBG: Well, they did shoot a cameo with Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury. Is this kind of layng the groundwork because I noticed that the two Marvel movies have sort of a cross referencing.

JOEQ: Oh, you know … Is there a cameo somewhere? I have no idea of what you speak. (both laugh)

TCBG: All right. This is sort of a goofy question, you put out a song earlier this year called two weeks late …

JOEQ: Oh, actually that was last year. I put out a song to Marvel fans each year. I’ve done it five years in a row, unfortunately I didn’t get to do it this year. “Two Weeks Late” was a comment on late comics and fans were really getting up in arms so I put out this song.

It was for Christmas of 2006 but I put it out two weeks late so it was actually in 2007.
It’s just something I do. I used to do a musician for a living before I ever did any of this stuff so once in a while I like to get goofy with that.

TCBG: You have a history of actually standing behind the comics that are running late. A lot of the time it really pays off with a great comic. On a few occassions, like “Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk,” it just kind of stalled out in production. Is there any projection for when tht would be coming out or is it a dead project?

JOEQ: The current projection write now is that Damon (Lindelof) has handed in every single script except for the verly last. But that doesn’t really matter right now because Leinil (Francis Yu) is doing Secret Invasion.

My suspicion is that when Lenil get’s done with Secret Invasion, he really wants to finish this, so I think that this will be the next thing that he jumps on. And then we’ll be able to finish that and get the comics out.

So I know that Damon is pretty much done but he’s not really in a rush to get the last script out because we don’t have an artist for it now but I suspect that once Lenil is done we’ll green light it again.

TCBG: One thing that happened last year was a certain amount of “hatred” toward Iron Man. Was that something that was conceived before …

JOEQ: Oh yeah absolutely. We know which side of the registration act fandom was going to rally against so we knew we were putting Tony Stark into a really interesting position. But it was really a position that we thought was right for him.

What’s interesting about that is that is that shortly after, almost every single script we were getting in from our writers, nearly every pitch I was getting from our writers or young writers trying to get into the industry either featured Tony stark or had Tony Stark in a cameo. So at the end of the day I think its really been working out well for us in that he’s really the misunderstood hero in this whole thing. But it’s made him that much more interesting to all our fans out there and he’s literally in all out books at this point.

TCBG: Not knowing that that would be a by product, was that really a calculated gamble on your guys’ part, kind of casting him as the bad guy?

JOEQ: Well first of all, we didn’t cast him as the bad guy. When you look at the decisions he made … We didn’t take any side in this, we presented both sides of the argument with registration of not registering and everybody falls within those lines. But when someone, one of our characters says, “You know what, I think the government’s right” because of the climate of this country right now, most of our readership is going to say, “Oh, I’m not with him, he’s with the government.”

Say what you will but that happens to be what happened and we expected that. It doesn’t mean that Tony’s wrong, by the way. It doesn’t mean that the government is wrong either. In the storyline, Tony ended up being right but he made the tough call of saying, this is right for us right now.

So people might want to see him as a villain but that’s certainly not how he was cast in any of this.

TCBG: On that same level though, most of the best villains don’t think of themselves as “bad guys.” But I don’t’ think he was a “villain” I mean, he was going up against Captain America and it’s kind of hard to look like a hero while doing that.

JOEQ: Well yeah. (both laugh)

TCBG: Well if Cap were whacked out on drugs or something maybe but other than that you’re going to look like the bad guy. This next one is definitely a loaded question though. Are we going to see Steve Rogers return as Captain America?

JOEQ: Are we going to see Steve Rogers return? Quite frankly I don’t know. I mean, I’m looking at the next six months of books right now, I don’t see Steve Rogers anywhere. So I have no idea.

What I can tell you is that “Captain America” the book is doing incredibly well and Steve Rogers ain’t in it. We even have a new Captain America and Steve Rogers ain’t in that costume.

TCBG: Oh, and it’s being done really well by Ed Brubaker. And I think it’s really one of the best entry level books out there in that it’s not a traditional comic story it’s being written more like an espionage book.

JOEQ: And he’s managed to do one of the most difficult things in our industry which is making Cap, I mean he wears the American Flag, and he’s made him an interesting character that we want to read about.

TCBG: Well Captain America has traditionally taken an interesting look at our country I mean he had, well they never directly stated, but he had Richard Nixon as a bad guy.

JOEQ: You now, when a writer decides to go out on an edge, like Ed has, Captain America is a really interesting character. But when Marvel says, “We don’t want him to take a stand, we just want him to be a superhero,” that’s when the character has suffered. So that’s what I’m saying. It’s a little bit tough to write Captain America because you really have to have a little bit of chutzpah to be able to say I’m going to have the character stand for something.

Not everyone is going to agree but that’s what we’re going to do.

Again, everyone sees the American Flag and everyone has varying degrees when they see that. When I look at the American Flag, I think I’m as patriotic as the next guy and I have certain feelings. When my dad looked at it, I mean my dad fought in the Korean war, he feels, possibly similar to me but he feels something different. The same thing with my grandfather, he was an immigrant who came to this country and fought in World War II. So everyone who sees Captain America feels the same thing. They all see a piece of themselves in that character, so you’re never going to please everybody.

TCBG: Two more questions. One is about you. You’re probably about the highest ranking Latino in the industry right now. Do you feel a certain weight about that?

JOEQ: I don’t feel any “weight” about it. I feel a lot of pride. My father was very proud of his roots and made sure that I understood it completely but as far a weight, not really.
I mean Latinos, we’ve done really well in a lot of major industries. But at the end of the day I’m just a guy trying to do my job and if that inspires people that’s great, but really just trying to keep my head above water.

TCBG: My last question is really for you. At the end of interviews I like to turn over the floor in case there’s anything we forgot to talk about and something you wanted to say.

JOEQ: No I think we’re good. We covered a lot actually. (both laugh)

Ms. Marvel keep trying to become the best hero she can be in the Marvel Comics title. This month’s issue is a tie in to the ‘Secret Invasion’ storyline. Take a look.

‘Secret Invasion’ is underway and this month’s issue of Mighty Avengers marks the return of Marvel Comics‘ master of cloak and dagger, Nick Fury. Punisher War Journal readers will note that the man in the eye-patch was seen in the pages passing a dossier to Frank Castle, but this is a look at what the master of espionage has been up too.

This week we’ll be focusing on a trio of strong women characters. One that’s had a long and constantly changing role in the Marvel Universe (Ms. Marvel), one that’s had a long role but has changed very little (She-Hulk) and a fairly new character that I’m expecting big things from (Echo).

Echo is proving to be a very interesting character. The only real problem I have with her is that her deafness is often ignored when writing her making it inconsistent. Still, this is a character to watch and her team-up with Wolvie in this issue is pretty cool.