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  #1  
Vieux 21/03/2005, 11h11
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Marvel Allan Jacobsen (New Invaders)

http://www.medinnus.com/winghead/allenj.html

Dernière modification par Fred le mallrat ; 11/04/2020 à 17h25.
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  #2  
Vieux 21/03/2005, 14h08
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gillesC vise plus juste que le TireurgillesC vise plus juste que le TireurgillesC vise plus juste que le TireurgillesC vise plus juste que le TireurgillesC vise plus juste que le TireurgillesC vise plus juste que le TireurgillesC vise plus juste que le TireurgillesC vise plus juste que le TireurgillesC vise plus juste que le TireurgillesC vise plus juste que le TireurgillesC vise plus juste que le Tireur
Oh, that Jacobsen!

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Vieux 21/03/2005, 14h17
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christophe change la caisse du Fauve
Pareil !
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Vieux 21/03/2005, 14h29
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gillesC vise plus juste que le TireurgillesC vise plus juste que le TireurgillesC vise plus juste que le TireurgillesC vise plus juste que le TireurgillesC vise plus juste que le TireurgillesC vise plus juste que le TireurgillesC vise plus juste que le TireurgillesC vise plus juste que le TireurgillesC vise plus juste que le TireurgillesC vise plus juste que le TireurgillesC vise plus juste que le Tireur
On reconnait ceux qui mettent en rayon.
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Vieux 21/03/2005, 14h48
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qui est l autre?
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Vieux 21/03/2005, 15h26
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non non.
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Vieux 11/04/2020, 17h24
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Citation:

First of all, let me reiterate what a sincere pleasure this is for me. I'm a massive fan of the New Invaders and I'm very grateful for the opportunity to quiz the man who gave us the series.

1) Before we get into New Invaders itself, it’s been almost fifteen years since the series was published. What have you been up to since then?

Before, during, and after New Invaders, my “real job” has been working in Television Animation, mostly as a Director. I was at Film Roman working on King of The Hill when New Invaders was published, and somewhere around the time of the series I moved to Nickelodeon where I worked for about 10 years with occasional hops to other places, like Cartoon Network. I’ve been working at Dreamworks Animation for the past few years. I also teach animation and storytelling classes to high school and college students on the side. I get paid to teach, but that’s just a fortunate side effect. I really do it for the experience. It’s really important to me to share the things I’ve learned with young (or elderly and interested) people. 

2) I presume comics must have been a fairly significant part of your life for you to end up working for Marvel comics. What did Allan Jacobsen read as a youngster and are you still reading today?

Comics were a foundational influence for me. There is no time in my life where comic books, particularly superheroes, weren’t a huge influence. As a child, my serious intent was to become a superhero. I realized acquiring super powers was unlikely, and I grudgingly abandoned that aspiration when I was around ten years old, but the concept of heroism and courage in defense of those less fortunate than me remain guiding principles. My parents sent me to a Private school for several years (before High School), and the thing that really connected with me about religious faith was that these people---these Bible characters we’d read about, were a type of superhero. I don’t mean this in a disrespectful way to people of faith, but for me, childhood was a stew of Comics, Luke Skywalker, and Bible heroes like Samson and Jesus. When I discovered Joseph Campbell (who authored the book “The Hero With A Thousand Faces”) as a young adult, it all came together for me. The things that truly move me are mythology, and human psychology. Joseph Campbell studied world religions, and the various myths that bind us together, and he generated this amazing concept called “The Heroes Journey” or “The Monomyth” that has become a very useful lens for most modern storytellers to view stories. Whew! Long answer, huh?

Yeesh---back on track---what do I read today? I love Comixology. I do miss the feel of the paper, but the convenience of downloading comics and not having them gather dust in boxes is soooooo great!!!! I always seem to wind up reading Daredevil and Moon Knight. They always tend to be among my favorite characters, and they often end up being handled by talented creative teams that I enjoy. I love so many characters, but I don’t always enjoy the current iterations. A good deal of my superhero reading has been outside Marvel and DC lately. Robert Kirkman’s Invincible Universe is a lot of fun, although I’ve never read the core title. I love Atomic Robo. I usually love Hellboy stuff. I also keep buying digital copies of comics I had when I was a kid. I always enjoy that because I can still experience it the way I did when I was young.

3) Is it fair to say that writing comics isn’t what you are best known for (If I recall you were known primarily for your work on the animated series 'King of the Hill' prior to New Invaders publication in 2004). How did the circumstances that saw you working for Marvel come about?

There’s a lot of crossover between Animation Professionals and Comics Professionals. I became an Assistant Director back in 1996 with zero animation experience or education. I got hired based on comic book samples because comics had always been a way to tell stories for me. Very often, professionals will claim that comic book storytelling and film storytelling (storyboards) are very different---but they’re not. The details are different, but the principle is the same. What do you want to convey to the audience about this situation/character. What does the character feel? What do you want the audience to feel?

I came into animation with storytelling skills and no knowledge of animation. I wanted to do animation for six months or so could pay some bills, and then I figured I’d go do comics. Then, they made me an Assistant Director and it wasn’t long before I said “Hey. How would I become a Director?” Be careful what you wish for! Hahahahaha. Animation has been good to me. I started working in 1996 and I’ve only been unemployed for a few months in all that time. I’m grateful for my career, but it’s not what the child in me set out to do.

So, at King of the Hill, one of the guys I became friends with was named Chuck Austen. He and I often ended up having lunches and talking about comics that we both enjoyed. There was a big group of us at KOTH that would go out for new comics and then get lunch together on Wednesdays. I was always working on characters and ideas and planning to self-publish things, and Chuck was already doing a lot of self-publishing. He did a lot of comedy and a lot of adult material, which wasn’t the type of comics I’d really read or been interested in when I was growing up, but I was always interested in him as a creator and as a creative person, and as a friend.

He wound up pitching (and selling) a War Machine Series to Joe Quesada, and within a few months it was off to the races and Chuck had left KOTH to do comics full time. We’d still meet for lunch and talk about things, and I always enjoyed hearing about the comics he was working on or whatever insider news he had to share about comics.

4) The New Invaders team was first seen in the pages of Avengers (vol 3) in the story 'Once an Invader' written by Chuck Austen. What part did you have in the creation of the team? Where you there from the onset, or did you find yourself involved later on? If the former, what was your pitch/inspiration for the team?

I had absolutely nothing to do with any of that. That was all Chuck. My recollection of events is that I was putting together pitches for Marvel around that time. I just decided at some point to write a bunch of sample scripts and see if they were interested in anything. I decided to pitch several genres at once. I pitched a Wendigo mini-series that featured Marvel’s Wendigo as the main character, and Alpha Flight’s Shaman and Snowbird as the heroes who were pursuing him. I pitched a Black Goliath series, a new supernatural/paramilitary hero, and a series about a young girl who believed Doctor Strange to be her father. To my surprise and delight, Marvel got back to me with serious interest in doing Wendigo, and I got to work on that.

I also had been working on a New Invaders concept, but it hadn’t yet become a full pitch. My concept was a group of WW2 era heroes aboard a retrofitted WW2 battleship, who were battling a modern enemy with ties to WW2. I wanted to use Jim Hammond as the central character because I always loved the way the Original Human Torch looked. In my mind, Hammond was the cover character of Marvel Comics #1 so it was high time he came into his own as a major player.

I remember going to lunch at Acapulco (that’s a Mexican chain restaurant) and meeting Chuck, and him showing me pages for “Once An Avenger”. I was excited to see he was using doing a riff on the Invaders, but of course, that torpedoed my idea for the pitch. I remember asking him if the female Human Torch was Frankie Ray, and he said it was Jim Hammond’s daughter, and that she was always going to be naked because her fire would burn her clothes.

I remember asking “what about unstable molecules” but he hated stuff like that because it referenced outside continuity and he preferred to keep everything specific to the story. I said her name should be “Tara” like a female version of “Toro”, and he liked that idea.

I wound up putting the “unstable molecules” reference in my first issue of New Invaders. There has been a West Coast Avengers scene where USAgent was angry because the Vison was naked. I think it was Jim Hammond who was like “Get that girl some clothes! What about unstable molecules?!” And then I did a scene where Union Jack was life drawing Tara because he’s an artist, and Blazing Skull was doing childlike drawings and Walker was just standing there drinking a beer. That was mostly because Chuck has established that Walker had this naked girl on his team and for some reason he was fine with it---after that, there was no more naked Tara.

I did a few drawings of what I wanted. The idea was that she couldn’t regulate her flame, so I wanted to put her in a featureless control suit. Head to toe. Just a bright red body stocking with no facial features. The idea was twofold: she would look like Toro in his Golden Age appearances, which I loved, but it would also dehumanize her to show that she was this artificial being who had not connected with humanity. The idea was to develop a father/daughter relationship between her and Hammond, and as he taught her to control her flame powers, he would slowly regain control of his own. The idea was to have her gradually become a more human Torch, and then take away the suit so we would finally see this beautiful young girl.

All of that was for New Invaders. I suppose I’m getting way ahead of myself here.

The thing is, I’m not quite sure when the project moved from something Chuck was doing in Avengers to something we were planning to write together as a series.

My memory about all of this gets a bit murky---Marvel put Wendigo on hold and asked me to work on something else---but I can’t get my head around what that was. It was another horror-thing.
I’m not sure if it was Chuck who first mentioned collaborating on Invaders, but it must have been. He might have been over worked or too busy or maybe he was just being friendly. I honestly can’t recall. I just remember sharing my ideas for the fun of it, and then somewhere along the line Tom Brevoort was involved.

The editor who was overseeing Wendigo worked for Tom. He was the one I’d been in contact with, so somehow at this time it got turned into “Allan and Chuck are friends, and they could do this together” which could have been cool, but it just never really panned out that way.

I THINK the sequence of events was like this: Tom asked Chuck to create the Invaders for the Avengers arc. They talked about doing a spin-off. I believe the idea was for Chuck to leave the Avengers and do a book where he would have more creative freedom. I think that’s what it was. Like I said above, I’m not sure if it was that Chuck was too busy, he wasn’t interested, or if he was just purely offering me the opportunity, but it was me who did the series pitch for New Invaders, and Tom accepted the pitch. I insisted that it needed to be “The New Invaders” because it clearly wasn’t going to be the traditional Invaders. The idea was that Chuck and I would write it together.

That only lasted through the #0 issue. Basically, Chuck offered to step aside. He and I were friends. He and I are still great friends. At that time, Chuck was still at the height of his comics writing career and it was very gracious of him to allow me to step in.

Chuck gets a lot of shit for the comics he wrote. I don’t know what to say about that. He jokingly refers to himself as “the most hated man in comics”, but he’s certainly not hated by the people who know him. He put a lot of love and care into his writing, and at some point, fandom turned against him. It’s sad. People have a right to feel whatever they feel about his work, but I hate it when there are weird accusations or insults of him or his intentions.

People do the same sort of thing to Zack Snyder and I can’t get my head around it. Personal attacks against creative people are weird. Attack the work, not the creator.

Chuck and I have remained friends through all these years. Most recently we worked together at Dreamworks a few years back, and we’re putting the finishing touches on an animated series we’ve had in development with another major animation studio that we’ve been working on for what feels like FOREVER!!!! Fingers crossed. It should be soon---

5) With a wealth of Golden, Silver, and modern age characters that would have been a good fit for the New Invaders concept, why did you end up choosing the characters that ended up on the roster? What relationships/dynamics were you hoping to create/explore?

I had so many ideas. I could go one with this forever.

I wanted to connect the origins of Blazing Skull and Thin Man, because both had these Tibetan origin stories. I wanted to bring in another team of WW2 heroes. I wanted the New Invaders to be an Army. My second major arc (after defeating Axis Mundi) was going to be called “The Old Guard” where we’d get to introduce many of the old faces. Red Raven, Blue Diamond. A legacy version of the Whizzer called Mongoose.

Steve Rogers, Namor, and Hammond were going to be the central “committee” of leadership, but Hammond was going to be the guy running the operation, and Spitfire was going to be the second in command.

With Spitfire, I was fascinated with the idea of an elderly woman who had been given a second chance at youth. At the start of the series, she was dating Joey Chapman (Union Jack), who was the best friend of her dead son. That was meant to show her struggling with her reinvigorated youthfulness, and her struggling with this terror that she might be reverting to her older self. I was actually following the relationship that they had developed in Marvel UK’s Knight of Pendragon series. It wasn’t my plan to keep them together.

The idea was to put them together so we would see she belonged with Jim (Hammond). They were the King and Queen, like Arthur and Guinevere, and Chapman was the Lancelot.

Some of the things I wanted to do got alluded to in the series. The Mighty Destroyer, Roger Aubrey, was meant to develop into the “good mentor” of the series while the Thin Man would always be there as a sort of “trickster figure” straddling the line between good and evil. Aubrey’s relationship with Spitfire and Hammond, Joey Chapman and Tara fascinated me. I thought they’d be a great core team.

Walker, Blazing Skull, and Chapman were Bros. They were always going to the boots on the ground. The “away team” that handled much of the physical action/investigation. I loved those guys together.

When we got cancelled, the editor encouraged me to develop spin-offs. The suggestion was to use character from New Invaders but pair them with other parts of the Marvel universe.

One version focused on Namor, Peter Noble (The Fin), his wife Nia, and the Thin Man (because he had that big interdimensional battleship). The central character of that one would have been Walter Newell, the superhero called Stingray. I designed a super cool revised costume for him.

Another idea was to just give Blazing Skull his own series. I did a treatment for that, and I felt pretty excited, but it was another case where it started to feel as if it was something I didn’t want to write the more we discussed it. I probably should have pushed to do it, but by that point I was frustrated with comics and I decided to put my creative energy into my animation work.

Now that I’m talking about it, I can’t stop thinking about it. Daaaaaaamn, that would have been fun.

They didn’t want to do Union Jack and Spitfire, which would have included Roger Aubrey and would have followed up on all the Baroness Blood stuff. Christos Gage did a Union Jack series a few years later, and eventually Spitfire was turned into a vampire in a Captain Britain series.

6) New Invaders was the first time we had seen the team since the 70's (barring a 4 part mini series in the 90's). Is it safe to assume you were a fan of the original series? If so, any particular memories of it?

It started with Liberty Legion for me! They had a couple of issues in Marvel Premiere when I was like 6 years old. I loved those guys. I couldn’t read very well because I was 6. My Uncle Frieddie loved comics. He was a guy with what we would now call development issues. He was a sweet guy with mild mental retardation. Anyway, he was the guy I would ask about comics. I couldn’t remember how to pronounce “Patriot” and I kept asking all the time and it always made Freddie roll his eyes and get angry at me.

“His name is Pay Tree It!”

The yellow guy (the Whizzer) got his super speed from a mongoose. Like Rikki Tikki Tavi! I thought that was so cool!

Blue Diamond caught my attention right away. Red Raven. The green Plastic man (Thin Man), Captain America Girl (Miss America), and Jack Frost! We all knew that guy from the Christmas song. He likesd to nip on noses!

I loved those guys and I loved when they crossed into Marvel Two-In-One with my other favorite super buddy, ben Grimm!

I picked up Invaders because I noticed that it had the “real” Human Torch. The one that I’d read about in some of Frediie’s old books. Jim Hammon! The Android human Torch! And Tori!!!! I couldn’t believe it when I actually picked up the book. The “Corner box” just had three heads, but inside Bucky and Toro were a part of the team too! TORO!!!!! Toro the Flaming Kid! My head practically exploded.

There was one issue where Jim Hammond yelled “Hell!” in a spiky word balloon with big black letters and I remember endlessly exclaiming “Hell!” until my Mom made me stop. They seemed so badass because they were fighting a War!!!!

And Freddie found me some issues at the comic shop where the Liberty Legion crossed over with the Invaders! It was so god!

And then, the issue with Union Jack on the cover. The. Best. I had fallen in love. His sister was a speedster called Spitfire. My Dad told me that was a WW2 airplane. SO cool. She got her powers from Jim Hammond’s blood?!

And they were enemies with a Nazi Vampire?!

What could be worse than a Nazi combined with a Vampire?!

When John Byrne gave us a new Union Jack in the pages of Captain America a couple of years later I was over the moon.

7) Which was your favorite character of the New Invaders series, and why?

This is really tough because I fell in love with all of them as they developed for me. Going into the series, Union Jack was my favorite, but Jim Hammond was the one I really wanted to write.

The Thin Man very quickly became a favorite of mine because he was so tortured and manipulative.

By the end, Blazing Skull was probably my favorite. On the surface, he had this batshit craziness that was really funny and unpredictable, but there was an undercurrent of pain and sadness that I wanted to explore. There’s so much I would have loved to do with him.

8 ) New Invaders was published in 2004, very much still in the shadow of 9/11. I perceived some reflections of the immediate 9/11 world in the series (John Walkers shield carried the names of American 'victims of terrorism' for example, and I recall him making an impassioned speech about how they needed to show the world 'that America isnt afraid to fight'. They were a black ops team that operated without borders and did the kind of murky, dubious dirty jobs that the likes of the Avengers couldn’t be seen to get involved in etc). Was this an intention tone you wanted to create for the series?

This is a challenging area for me to discuss, because I believe stories should be separate from storytellers. My goal was to tell good stories within the framework I was given---but some of that framework was difficult for me. I remember being really frustrated because the editors SEEMED to have read and accepted my pitch. All of the discussion about what I wanted to do were met with enthusiasm and affirmation. I wanted to write about heroes. I wanted to give Marvel a “legacy book” like what DC was doing with JSA. I wanted to dust off the old toys and shine a light on the older characters and old-fashioned attitude about heroism and sacrifice. There was a particular phone call---I was actually in the hospital on the day my second son was born, and during the many hours of waiting, I was working on a script for the first issue and I wound up getting a phone call from Marvel---the editor kept repeating “but why can’t they just be the Red Skull’s dirty tricks squad?”

Now, seriously, I might be absolutely wrong here, but I hated that idea. I just wasn’t interested. I realize that’s what editorial was pushing for when they made the Invaders the villains in the Avengers storyline, but I wanted to rehabilitate that. I remember feeling very irritated and pressured to be putting forth a political agenda that I just didn’t support. There was this notion that the heroes were supposed to somehow represent fascists who beat the world into submission with their “might makes right” orientation. I think there’s definitely a validity to that concept, but I prefer to approach “real world” issues metaphorically and thematically rather than by creating caricatures that represent political ideologies. Very quickly, I began to feel “This is not for me. I’m just not doing this. I’m not writing someone else’s manifesto”, so there was a conflict.

I wanted to take that idea---the idea that some people do abuse power and do subjugate freedom for their own gain needs to be opposed. I just wanted the good guys to be the ones doing (or trying to do) the right thing, and the villains doing the wrong thing. I always hate those revisionist stories where someone will say “What if Robin Hood was the bad guy and the Sheriff of Nottingham was the good guy?!”

Um. No. We don’t rewrite stories so Hitler is the good guy. Nobody wants that. It’s just stupid. Why write a book about heroes so we can show that heroes are just ignorant bullies? How is that inspiring? It’s just cynical and frustrating and I hate it. My favorite heroes (Daredevil, Moon Knight) have significant darkness about them, but the struggle with it. It inspires us to try. I hated the idea of writing arrogant heroes who were wrong because we were supposed to be pointing out that George Bush was an arrogant bully in the real world.

I hated that John Walker was supposed to be our poster boy for this mentality. I hated that he was calling himself Captain America because the Red Skull was tricking him. I kept saying “They already did this. He grew out of this. That was the whole point of his character. He knows he’s not Captain America. He’s USAgent. He needs to be USAgent.”

I didn’t mind the suit. I preferred he have his own visual identity, but if Marvel wanted him to be wearing a version of Captain America’s suit, I had/have no problem with that. It’s like Green Lantern. A guy with a shield and a flag suit. LIKE Captain America, but not walking around telling people “I AM Captain America”.

There are a lot of versions of this character. If you boil it all down, what I see is a patriotic guy with an aggressive disposition. Not a bad guy. Not a moron. Not a representative of soldiers who do bad things because they’re told to do bad things. I tried to write him as a proud man who has a difficult time admitting when he’s wrong. I’m pretty sure I never called him Captain America. He was “Walker” or Usagent.

I tried to use him as the strong man of the book. He got knocked down a few pegs at the very start because I wanted to rehabilitate him from the “Once An Avenger” arc in the Avengers. I liked the idea of him being a bit uptight and the odd man out with Union Jack and Blazing Skull, but slowly turning them into brothers. Towards the end of our run (of what was supposed to be an ongoing series) I did a story with Walker, Namor, and Blazing Skull where they fought a brainwashed Wolverine. The only info Marvel would give me was that Wolverine was brainwashed. The rest was “secret”. Ummmm. Okayyyyyyyyyyy. In that issue I tried to turn things around by having Walker earn Namor’s respect. Moving forward, I wanted to build on that---I think they only told us we were cancelled when I had already written issue nine. So everything had to be wrapped up in issue ten, and I TRIED to do that in a way that felt organic.

I don’t think it worked. I don’t think most of the series worked, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. It was an extremely frustrating experience. Completely baffling at times. I know they didn’t want it to fail because that makes no sense, but it was plagued with problems from the start.

I still love what we did, but I love it in a qualified way. I’m always grateful to hear that some people really loved it. I tried. We tried. I wish we could revisit it. Since then I’ve frequently played with the idea of doing a creator-owned book using analogues of the New Invaders so I could tell the stories I wanted to tell, but it feels like beating a dead horse at this point, and my career has always kept me very busy, so I never really had the time I wanted to get around to it.

9) With that in mind, what are your feelings with regards to our comic heroes becoming involved in stories that reflect real-world events or stories clearly influenced by them (the recent 'Secret Empire' series is a good recent example)? Where do you think the balance between the power of a comic book to provide a platform for often divisive political discussion and opinions, and the responsibility to be balanced, non-partizan and inlclusive form of entertainment and escapism should be struck?

I suppose I already covered this above. I’m not interested in taking shots at other creators, or in second guessing their creative decisions. I can really only speak to the things I enjoy as a consumer and the things I enjoy as a creator. On one hand, I feel as if it’s unprofessional for me to comment or criticize what other professionals do. It’s hard work to get your ideas out there, and it can be very personal. On the other hand, you’re asking me things I’ve never gotten to talk about when me and Marvel broke up, so you’re giving me the chance to have some closure in our relationship. For the record, I still love her and think she’s beautiful. Marvel left me, not the other way around. Hahahahahaha.

To me, the “real world” is better addressed by NOT tackling “current events” because things change so quickly. What doesn’t change are the struggles that create current events. Human desires. Human fears. Racism and gender bias are all “fear of the other”. I’d rather address important themes as metaphors.

To be honest, I didn’t read Secret Empire, but I did listen to a good deal of commentary. All I could think was “Wow. That’s the same story they wanted me to do. Get over it already.” BUT---to be FAIR to everyone involved, I didn’t actually read it. It could be a spectacular series. I don’t know.

I saw a Savage Dragon comic book cover with Donald Trump on it. It made me laugh because it was funny, but it didn’t make me want to read it. If Savage Dragon fought a super villain who wanted to build walls or something in a more creatively expressed way, I think a story like that could be very interesting. Literally showing Savage Dragon running from a Trump caricature seems rather inelegant to me. I actually like Savage Dragon. I don’t always read it, but I don’t always read anything. I’m not trying to pick on this book---I’m citing an example of things I don’t like.

My favorite thing that Erik Larsen has done is bring the Lev Gleason Golden Age Daredevil into his Savage Dragon stories. That Golden Age Daredevil has always been a favorite of mine! I love that costume so much. Simple perfection.

10) Sadly New Invaders only lasted a total of ten issues. Had the series continued, what were your plans? Any specific plans for individual characters?

There was so much planned. It was really a drag the way it went down. When we started, I had two years worth of stories planned (loosely) because I really intended this to be an ongoing series. I wanted to follow up on the Baroness Blood storyline, I wanted to examine the Tibetan origins of Blazing Skull and Thin Man. This would have connected them to Aarkus, the original Vision, and brought him into the series.

I wanted to have Roger Aubrey and Joe Chapman address the significance of the Union Jack legacy. In particular, I wanted to show the Joey Chapman was the right guy for the job because he was such an average guy. A working class everyman. But the comics continuity shows that he was not only chosen to be Union Jack by circumstance. In the Knights Of Pendragon series, he was chosen by the Green Knight to embody the spirit of Lancelot. I wanted to bring that mystical aspect into the series over time. I had plans to bring the Green Knight into the series as a supernatural presence.

I wanted to develop the relationship between Jim Hammond and Jaqueline Falsworth. I fully intended to restore Jim Hammond to his original power set. We were going to drop the “Human” part of his code name and leave that for Johnny Storm. He was going to be “The Torch” because I wanted to honor his significance as the first real Marvel hero. (Namor had been introduced an anti-hero, so technically, Hammond is the first).

I didn’t plan to deactivate Tara the way we did at the end of the run. That was just to give the series closure. I didn’t want to kill off Jim Hammond. I wanted to elevate him. Using Jim Hammond was always an uphill battle and they were really happy to have him taken out of play at the end of the series. I was actually thinking of the way they had ended Power Man and Iron Fist years earlier. It was one of my favorite comic book issues as a teenager. It was just incredibly sad. The series ended with the heroic death of Iron Fist (in his sleep, no less!!!!) at the hands of a super-powered kid that he had just tried to heal with his Chi. The series ends with Luke Cage as a fugitive, never having had the chance to make amends with his former partner and best friend, and being accused of iron Fist’s murder.

I wanted to end it sadly because I was sad about it, but I wanted to end it in a way that all the seeming death and loss was easily reversible. Comic book cliffhanger stuff. In my mind, Jim wasn’t dead. He was temporarily deactivated. Same for Tara. I had hoped they would all continue on after the series, but no one ever really picked up on any of the threads---

We were in the process of folding the V-Battalion that had been established by Fabian Nicieza into the New Invaders. All of the early discussion with Marvel were about making New Invaders analogous to DC’s JSA, but with a GI Joe vibe. The Avengers are the JLA, the Invaders are the JSA. I wanted the series to be a showcase for all the forgotten WW2 heroes.

I wanted to do adventures that focused on the USAgent/Blazing Skull dynamic because they seemed like such a wonderful comedic pair to play off one another. Union Jack was the third member of this unlikely trio, but he was more of the “straight man”. I liked the idea of Walker and Skull functioning as a team because reigning in Skull’s more extreme behavior played into the “supercop” aspect that Jerry Ordway had developed in his version of Usagent.

It seems like they would have been a delightful, co-dependent pair.

11) I've previously mentioned that I run the world’s premier (read only) USAgent fan-page. What are your feelings about John Walker/USAgent. Why did he find himself with a place on the team when Steve Rogers would have been the conventional choice?

That was in place before I got involved. I wanted to bring Steve Rogers in---which we did by the end of our 10 issues---but I didn’t want him to be a main character. I wanted him to be the standard that our heroes were striving for. I wanted Jim Hammond to step into that role, and have Cap be his example.

Walker should be Walker. He and Cap have a long, complicated history, but I don’t like it when it’s petty. I like that they have fought it through, and that their perspectives will bring them into conflict, but they shouldn’t be enemies.

12) John Walker has often been portrayed as a jingoistic government-man, lacking of any social graces and interpersonal skills, who doesn’t play well with others and whose primary loyalties lie with the institution regardless of its faults.

On other occasions he has been portrayed as a cantankerous yet loyal team player with a secret heart of gold and a willingness to ignore even direct orders if it means doing what he thinks is right.

Who is John Walker to you? Where do you think he sits between these two extremes?

This is another one where I partially answered this question in my rambling answers to other questions. 

I like heroes. I like reading about heroes. I like writing about heroes. I think struggling with personal flaws is heroic. I think John walker was conceived to be an antagonist to Captain America, but the character evolved into his own person. I’d like to think that I portrayed him the second way you described: a cantankerous yet loyal team player with a secret heart of gold and a willingness to ignore even direct orders if it means doing what he thinks is right.

So maybe all of the things you described are true. Maybe that’s the arc. As Super-Patriot he was a bad guy. A powerful guy who was too committed to a small world view. He became Captain America. He found out that he wasn’t worthy to be Captain America and it broke him. Next, he dressed in another version of Steve Rogers’ clothes. The guy obviously aspires to be Steve Rogers. No matter what he says, no matter what he consciously thinks, this is a guy that wants to BE Steve Rogers. Not Captain America. I think he wants what Steve Rogers has, and I don’t think he really knows what that is. He doesn’t know how to get it because he disagrees with Rogers. If he was younger, if there was less pride, he would have been an ideal student. He could have been the guy to carry the legacy, but he ran before he crawled and now he’ll always have those scars.

In the mini-series by Jerry Ordway, I think his portrayal was quite fun, but IMHO he had evolved too far. By that point he was a generic secret agent good guy with cool gear.

Where I really loved him was in John Byrne’s West Coast Avengers. “Make that robot put on some damn pants!” Hahahahahaha. Priceless. That’s the Walker I loved. As I mentioned above, it seemed odd to me that he was okay with having a naked young woman on his team in “Once An Invader”, but that version was really supposed to be a return to Walker as a bad guy, I think. He had been reset to his Super-Patriot persona because he was written to represent the jingoism that had become so prevalent in American culture in the wake of 9/11. It was political satire, and that was a fine version of him. It’s just not the version I wanted to write about.

13) What was your personal favourite moment of the series? What are you most proud of when you look back on it?

This isn’t exactly about the series itself, but it’s a funny little story about the process. We had written this awful #0 issue that didn’t seem to make any sense, and the release coincided with the San Diego Comicon. Someone from Marvel called, and said “Hey! You live in Los Angeles. You want to come and promote the book?”

Sure! But we don’t have anything to show---

“Just come to the Marvel table and we’ll handle the rest!”

They put me at a table between John Romita Jr. and (I think) the guy who was drawing Exiles at the time. Everone was waiting on this long line to get autographs from these guys and they’d all be stuck in front of me. “What do you do?”
“Oh! I’m writing the New Invaders book! It’s not out yet---“
That was not a very popular answer.  I tried to be playful and chatty, but it was definitely not a time of place for me. I remember one of the fans talking about John Romita Jr’s art as he was doing a sketch for someone else. I said “Oh, man. I love John’s art! He’s one of my personal favorites. Definitely one of the best!”

JR JR put down his pen, and turned to look at me. He just glared at me angrily for a really long time. I thought he was going to punch me. He never said anything. After about four hours he turned back to his drawing and he would never look at me again.

After a while I said “Uh---hey, man. I’m not sure what I said, but I definitely didn’t mean to offend---“ but I was saying it to his angry profile, so I just stopped and tried to salvage the afternoon. We never spoke again and I’m still not sure what I said. Maybe I should have said “Mr. Romita”? I genuinely don’t know. In mu business me always use first names. I still love his art---

Later, at the same Con, my wife told me she saw that the comic was on sale! I was so excited! No one had told me, and I had never seen a copy. I went over to a booth and asked for a copy. I told him I was so excited! I was the co-writer, and---

He interrupted me. “Yeah, I know who you are. I can see the name tag. Trying to boost sales by buying up all the copies?”

I dunno what I said, but I remember walking away wondering if I had somehow done something to make everyone at the Con hate me before I arrived. Hahahahaha.

I really tried with New Invaders. There was a really weird reaction.

Some people LOVED it. There was a devoted fan base. A couple of big film producers even contacted me because they loved it. Other rimes, I felt like I had done something criminal.

When the first real issue came out, I went to a local comic shop with my friends from work. Same thing. I told the store owner that I had this new series and I was so excited to see it on the shelf. I said “Do you ever have signing here? Is that something you’d be interested in?”

He said “Sometimes.” And he just stared into my soul until I slowwwwwwwly backed away.

14) Was there anything in retrospect that you would have done differently from a creative point of view?

All of it. Hahaha. A lot of what I wanted to do is there, but it was constantly changing.

I wrote a pitch---it was an elaborate pitch and it was worked out in rough form for two years worth of stories. I thought that’s what I signed on for. Then, very quickly, before we turned in the first issue we were told that New Invaders was going to be a central part of the plan company crossover, it was going to be an elaborate thing about Atlantis taking over the surface world, so we plotted around that.

Then, suddenly we were told that crossover was scrapped and Bendis was going to do Avengers Disassembled, so everything had to change.

It seems as if this happened left and right. We’d signed on to do something very specific and then all of the ideas got moved around at one of those big Writer Summits or something. Everything changed.

I remember Chuck saying that when he was writing Captain America he had tried to do a story where Bucky would be brought back to life, but without all of his memories intact and he’d been told Marvel would never do that. A few years later, that’s exactly what marvel did. I’m not implying any of this is theft of ideas or Editors playing favorites. I’m saying that a lot of creators have similar ideas and that comic publishing plans can change on a dime. It’s not sour grapes, either. I think Marvel ended up doing a lot of really cool stuff around this time. It just very quickly became apparent that they weren’t as interested in new Invaders as they were when we first discussed it.

I had pitched the series as ‘The New Invaders” and that’s what we had planned to do---then I was told Bendis was going to retitle the Avengers “The New Avengers”. I said that we’d sound like we were doing a thin copy. They told me to stick to my guns.

They made us quickly write this awful #0 issue that was meant to conclude the stuff Chuck had set up in Avengers, and set up the new status quo of the series. Somewhere around then Chuck decided not to be involved with the project, and the first issue was rewritten again.

It just kept changing.

We were only an issue or two into the run when Tom Brevoort passed the reins to an Assistant Editor. He didn’t even call. I just got a call. “I’m the editor now. Tell me what your plans are for this book”. He was a cool enough guy, but it was like everything that we had planned and discussed was out the window.

The whole thing was meant to revolve around the New Invaders and the Red Skull, but by the third issue or so I was told we weren’t allowed to use the Red Skull because Brubaker was doing a Red Skull story with Captain America. Oh, and by the way, we couldn’t use Captain America.

I really didn’t know what to do. I remember asking them what they wanted. They had handed me an existing concept where the New Invaders had been established (In the Once an Invader Storyline) as being manipulated into acting like bad guys for the Red Skull, and now we were supposed to pretend that wasn’t true.

Then there was the artistic process.

I’m an artist as well. I designed tweaked costumes for the cast, and I designed a bunch of villains. In Animation, that’s the way it works. There’s an approval process. It gets worked on, and approved, and then everyone sticks to the plan. Not in comics. At least not with New Invaders.

The brought on this really talented artist named CP Smith. He was a very cool guy, and I liked him very much. I enjoyed working with him very much. He came in and designed his own versions of the characters, and I figured, “Okay, that’s cool. Not what I was planning, but this is cool.” The problem (for me) was that he didn’t always follow the script. The finished pages were similar to what was scripted most of the time, but not always. Sometimes it was just completely different. A lot of times characters and sequences were just completely cut out, so a lot of the things I had planned to do had to be changed. The finished work was great, but it was never what I expected, and CP always waited until the end of the month to turn in everything at once.

Every issue was like that. I’d get a call from the editor on a Friday that the pages had come in and that they didn’t match the script, so I had the weekend to write something that made sense of the pictures. I tried to address it with CP, I tried to address it with the editors, but the response was always just a sort of shrug. Hahahahaha. It was crazy.

That being said, I still love CP Smith’s art. It’s just not the way we work in Animation, and the timeframe (rewrite the script over the weekend) made it really difficult. I always ended up with two days, and it was always two days of scrambling and panicking and trying to find things for the characters to say that would match these images I was looking at.

15) If you were tasked with bringing the New Invaders to the current market, how would you do it? What kinds of ideas would you like to explore?

I’d strive for diversity. I have this idea of Walker as a 14-year old girl that I think would really express the essence of the character. I’d want to keep Blazing Skull, but it would be Sam Wilson. Sorry for the Spoiler. Thin Man would be Gwen Stacy resurrected with a Patriarchal eating disorder.

I would do exactly the same as I intended to do the first time.

At the time of this interview, there’s been an odd trend in comics. Instead of promoting diversity by introducing new characters there’s been a lot of peculiar recasting of existing characters that unfortunately feel like pandering. Many of the most popular comic heroes were created a long time ago, so it is definitely true that the majority of well-known heroes are straight white males. As society becomes more enlightened and accepting of the beautiful diversity that the world has to offer, it stands to reason that readers want to see that reflected in the comics they read. I just think it needs to be organic. You can’t do it be taking away characters that readers are familiar with and replacing them with new, ore diverse stand-ins.

Make new characters. Use the existing titles to introduces readers to new characters that express diversity. This subject gets very charged and I’ve heard a lot of unfortunate debate about it, but if you look at it carefully, there are simply things you do and things you don’t do.

Did readers reject Sam Wilson as the Falcon? Hell no! The character is awesome. Did readers want him to be Captain America? I don’t think they did. I don’t think they want Sam Wilson Cap any more than the want John Walker as Cap. That’s not a rejection of diversity, it’s commitment to a particular character. You can do it for a brief period of time for a particular storyline, but it starts to feel weird. It was the same with Bucky Barnes. He is fine as Captain America for a story arc, but he’s not Captain America.

When readers reject this stuff, there are media reports that comic book fans are Nazis and they don’t embrace diversity. Comic fans loves Storm. They love Black Panther. They love John Stewart because he is A Green Lantern.

Can there be a Korean Hulk? Sure! Should that character replace Bruce Banner? Hell no! It would be cooler if he had his own name instead of “Hulk”, but there’s nothing wrong with adding a new gamma-irradiated strongman. Give him his own title. Amadeus Cho is a cool character with a cool name. I think it’s cool to see him use his genius to develop Hulk-like powers.

Can there be a female Thor? Well---actually that one is really stupid. Thor is the guy’s birth name. If she became the Goddess of Thunder, that would make sense. If they wanted to go genderless and say she was the new God of Thunder. That would be fine. Jane Foster telling everyone she’s the new Thor is like Mary Jane Watson getting bitten by a radioactive spider and telling everyone she’s the new Peter. Hahahaha. She looks cool. I like the character a lot, but calling her “Thor” is so stooped that it ruins it for me.

Can you imagine replacing T’challa with a Fillipina? That would be diverse too, but it would be pretty ridiculous.

In New Invaders, I brought in Roger Aubrey, the Mighty Destroyer, and I ran with the long-standing fan-theory that was later confirmed by Fabian Nicieza when he was using the character: Aubrey was gay and he had been the loving partner of Brian Falsworth, Union Jack. I was really looking forward to exploring that dynamic. In my mind, Aubrey was very resentful of Lord Falsworth that he (Aubrey) had not been offered the role of Union Jack after Brian died. He was resentful that it was given to Joey Chapman, a non-family member, because Lord Falsworth had never accepted Roger’s love of Brian. That’s an example of character diversity that makes sense to me. Roger Aubrey is gay, and that caused complications in his life, but he isn’t defined as a gay superhero. He’s a superhero who is gay.

I had plans to introduce a legacy heroine called Mongoose because I was still hung up on the Whizzer’s delightful Mongoose-blood origin. She was of African descent. The idea was to add diversity that way, but only if it fit the story.

Peter Noble, the Fin, was a character we never got much of a chance to explore. Her name in New Invaders was Nia Noble. She was named for “Neptunia”, an underwater culture that had been introduced in one of the Fin’s 1940’s adventures. She was the daughter of Invaders villains “U-Man” and “Lady Lotus”. She was a Japanese-Atlantean character with psychic powers. We certainly had enough white male characters, so the newer characters were intended to bring some diversity---but organically.

When you look around, these characters are already out there. They just need to be used. Red Raven has a daughter that had been introduced in Marvel continuity. I can’t remember her name right now, but I had planned to use her as well. I considered using modern version of Golden Girl and the Human Top (an Asian heroine and an African American hero) who had appeared in Roy Thomas’ Avengers but I just didn’t like the characters.

Here’s a little anecdote I just remembered. I was so excited to do New Invaders and so grateful for all the wonderful things Roy Thomas had done to keep the WW2 characters alive at Marvel and DC. I thought of him as a kinda hero. The guy who honors characters who were created by others. The guy that believes that keeping the characters alive for a new generation of readers was the whole point of it. So I emailed him to talk about the book and tell him what we were doing and tell him how much his work had meant to me.

OMG he was so mean! Hahahahahahaha. “Why would I want to hear about you using MY characters when Marvel has rejected my pitches?”

Likewise, Alex Ross. I was so excited to do the book, I contacted Alex Ross to commission a cover for the first issue. I wanted to give it as a gift to Tom Brevoort, but Alex Ross didn’t even respond. Some guy who runs his business told me Alex doesn’t do commissions. And a few years after we did New Invaders, he did his Human Torch series, and his Avengers/Invaders crossover and he did all these beautiful paintings.

Gee whiz. When I put it all together like this, I realize that nobody in comics was ever particularly nice. Hot damn! What’s up with that? Animation tends to be like a family. Comics seem to have a lot more ego and frustration because some people are huge celebrities---but only with a small group of people. Famous to comic fans, y’know? Then the rest are desperate to get noticed or to just be able to make a living doing what they love. I read somewhere that there are more aspiring comic creators than there are comics fans. That seems about right.

I met Neal Adams when I was around 17. He was really mean. I showed him some drawing and he responded with “Do you know how to draw a penis? You should draw penises. And telephones. The sort of things that don’t turn up in comic books. Don’t draw comic books, just draw.”

Which is pretty good advice overall---except the weird part about penises. Meeting Neal Adams actually changed something in me. I remember deciding that if I was ever in a position where someone was interested in me or my work I would always have an open door and always do what I could to encourage them to be the best they could be, without demeaning them. This is true. That experience guides me to this day.

I met Fabian Niceiza at a Comic Book store when I was a kid. I ran back to the cart where my Mom had my backpack and I showed him a drawing I had done because I was so excited to meet a guy like him. He looked at my drawing and said “Did you make this character up? That’s not a character I know. That looks like Brother Blood from Teen Titans. Everybody always rips of Perez. Mark Bagley is a really good costume designer.”

Conversely, I met John Buscema at a Video Store on Long Island. I think his daughter or something ahd opened ta video store and he was there promoting the opening. That guys was so kind and thoughtful and loving. I showed him a page I had drawn on 81/2x11 copy paper. He told me what he liked and where I could improve, and then he sketched a page to show me how he would have done it.

That’s a beautiful thing to do for a kid. That’s the kinda guy I want to be.

I still love the stories these guys write and the worlds they conjure. Sometimes it’s just a case of “it’s better not to meet your heroes”! 

Why am I saying all these things? I’m not saying it to trash these guys. They’re probably wonderful people who I caught at a bad time. I’m saying it because it matters, and because I’ve got a captive audience because you asked me some questions. For anyone who reads this, these are the things I hope people remember. The folks who read superhero comics---why do we do it? Because we want to believe in heroes. But there won’t be heroes unless we all try. What would Superman do? He’d try. As Joseph Campbell says “The hero is the one who sacrifices the most.”

Do the right thing. Be kind. It’s easy to be angry. It’s easy to be petty. It’s heroic to stand against all the cynicism and try to be kind.

16) Finally, is there any chance that we might see you involved with Marvel comics again in the future.

I would never say no. I would love that, but I have no plans to do so. I’m currently working with a friend who wants to pitch and idea to Dark Horse, and I’m really excited about that. Of I wasn’t so busy all the time, or if writing for comics really seems like a legitimate way to earn money for my family, nothing would make me happier.

Thanks once more for your time and this opportunity Allan.

Thank you, Dave!
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