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Radiation Interrogation: Brian Reed
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Location: Blogs Atomic FalloutRadiation Interrogation |
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| Posted by: Jake Bell |
Wednesday, January 03, 2007 12:20 AM |
If you asked comic book fans a year ago to name their favorite
characters, it's doubtful many would list Ms. Marvel. In fact, most
probably wouldn't have named her if you'd asked for their 20 favorite
characters. When you were given the reins of a Ms. Marvel book, did it
seem like more of a blessing or a curse?
Ms. Marvel was a total
blessing on a lot of fronts. First and foremost, it was an ongoing gig
- which is huge. I have friends who are constantly doing mini-series
and one shots at different companies and never scoring the ongoing book
they desire. I got very, very lucky on that front.
The fact that
Ms. Marvel was this sort of perennial B-lister meant that I had the
chance to come in with my own take on who she was and how she behaved
and not worry that somebody else had been doing her perfectly for the
last 5 years, so how was I ever going to match or outdo that.
Another
great element of Ms. Marvel being so low under the radar this time last
year was that it allowed people to see her as a new character. I've met
a lot of people who are surprised to find out she has such a long
history in the Marvel Universe. Several folks have even said they
thought Carol Danvers first appeared as Jessica Jones's friend in ALIAS just a couple years ago.
Last
of all, I had the same totally cynical view that a lot of creative
types have: "Thank God she's a low rung on the Marvel totem pole,
because if I do screw this up, then I won't have screwed up too badly.
It's not like I'm taking over Ultimate Spider-Man and destroying it,
right?"
But now, a year later, all of that seems sort of funny
to me. People have discovered Carol, either again or for the first
time. She's suddenly in all kinds of Marvel books, from the various CIVIL WAR tie-ins to the WONDER MAN mini. She's the most popular girl at school these days.
What
kind of different approach did you take to writing Ms. Marvel from the
way you would have written a series starring Wolverine or Spidey or
another entrenched star?
I think it's the same if you're writing Spider-Man or a book starring the Hypno Hustler.
Your
job as a writer -- most especially with characters that have been
around for decades and touched by hundreds of hands -- is to find your
particular way of talking about this character's life. Your way of
looking at the world is the only truly unique thing you're going to be
able to put on the page, and once you figure out how to project that
view through the lens of the character, you've got your pitch. You've
also got something that sounds terribly pretentious when you say it out
loud. Go ahead and read this paragraph out loud. I sound like a
creative writing teacher who has been pecking away at the Great
American Novel for twenty years. Sheesh.
Back to business though -- the cornerstone of the MS. MARVEL
pitch was, here's a woman who hasn't been giving it her all. She hasn't
been being the best that she can be. Starting right now, today, she's
going to be the best of the best. She's going to do everything she can
to elevate herself to that position she knows she is capable of. I've
said it before, I think that no matter what your position in life is,
being the best you can be is an incredibly noble goal.
I don't
wake up in the morning and think "I'm going to just be a sort of
sub-par dad today," or "I'm going to write, but I'm not going to try
and improve on past mistakes, or learn anything from my peers." I don't
think anybody intentionally does that. But we all slip sometimes. We
all put things off and do things a little less than 100% -- and that's
what Carol's realization was at the start of the series. She'd been
doing a sort of half-assed job and never calling herself on it.
As
we head into the second year, I'm getting to explore the next, sort of
unspoken step in the idea -- just saying "I want to be the best of the
best" doesn't get the job done. You've got to actually get out there
and do something.
How difficult is it to write a strong female lead character?
Honestly?
It's not difficult at all. Women are not some strange scary creatures
from another planet. Women want exactly the same thing guys want --
good lives, the chance to enjoy themselves, and to accomplish personal
goals.
What's funny is, it's difficult for people to believe things happening to a female lead that happen routinely to a male lead.
I
ran into a woman who accused me of writing Carol as very weak. And it
took me awhile to figure out what she was saying, because weak little
"oh no, won't someone save me, I'm just a poor little woman" characters
in stories just anger me to no end, so I knew I wasn't writing that.
What
I finally pieced together was that she was offended that Carol had
self-doubt. How many times has Spider-Man--or Captain America or even
Superman for the love of God--thought "I'm not sure I can do this"?
I've always marveled at the fact that when we're young, we assume
grownups know what they're doing. Here was the same thing, with this
woman assuming that a super hero, faced with a series of split second
decisions that might well settle the fate of the planet would have no
self doubt at all. But she didn't see it as a hero having self-doubt --
she saw it as a woman having self-doubt and she took offense to that.
I
recently got something along the same lines in a fan letter to the
book. I get into it in detail in the letters page for issue 11, but the
gist of the letter was "I can't believe a strong woman like Ms. Marvel
needed Wonder Man's help to catch that car that was flipping through
the air." And I explained that I hadn't written a situation where "the
girl can't catch a car all by herself." I had written a scene where I
found it more dramatic that the hero couldn't catch the car alone. It
was this extra beat of danger that didn't exist before and I thought it
sort of spruced things up. I would have done the same thing if I were
writing Spider-Man or Spider-Woman.
How surprised are you at the success of the book?
If
there's ever a writer who tells you they think they are positive will
succeed and people will love their work, they are either egotistical or
naive or stupid or a combination of the three. Haha. I don't know a
single guy paid to tell stories who isn't convinced that every page is
his last, destined to be found out as a fraud and fired by the end of
the business day.
I am very happy that I seem to have pleased a
lot of long time fans of the character, as well as attracted new fans.
And I'm downright honored to get mail from folks who tell us we've
entertained them.
Editor
Andy Schmidt is leaving the book. What kind of influence did he have on
the Ms. Marvel title? What will new editor Bill Rosemann bring to the
table and how do you think things will be different?
Andy is a
big part of the books success. I'm the first to admit that there's been
a lot of learning on the job in the first year, and Andy was there to
steer me back on track any time I'd start to veer off. Andy Schmidt
very much served as my training wheels for the Marvel Universe.
Bill
Rosemann is an absolute force of nature. He's got so much energy and so
much enthusiasm and so many ideas that it's contagious. We've cooked up
some things since his arrival that I'd never even remotely thought of
before. It's good stuff.
You're calling issue #13 the start
of your "second season." What kind of changes will we see from the
first year on the book to the second?
The first year was very
much a big time super hero book. Lots of punching things and flying
about and having the kind of crazy super adventures that you'd normally
see in ASTONISHING X-MEN or MIGHTY AVENGERS.
The
second year will flow into the next phase of that idea, and also start
to examine some of the fallout from the first year. Carol went into
this "best of the best" plan of hers with an incredibly gung-ho
attitude and not a whole lot of planning. If you go back and look at
all the issues, she only once (in the first issue, no less) struck out
into the world and found a problem to solve. Every other adventure in
the series has come looking for her. Traveler came to her apartment,
the government came to her for registration, Rogue showed up in her
apartment -- it was a running commentary on the fact that Carol's
talking a big game, but she isn't actually playing that game.
As
of issue 13, we see Carol invited to join the Mighty Avengers. And we
see her realize that it's just another day of her reacting to the world
around her and not actively taking control of the situation herself. So
she says no. She turns down the Avengers gig cold. And we get to see
through the rest of the issue the how and why of her changing her mind
and taking the offer to join the Mighty Avengers. What we end up with
is a Ms. Marvel who is being much more proactive and much more the hero
she thought she was going to be 12 issues ago.
How has your writing changed from working with Roberto De La Torre to working with Aaron Lopresti?
With
Rob, we were both really learning our craft. We'd both done comics work
before Ms. Marvel, but this was, for both of us, the first ongoing book
where we had to be constantly producing new content. And we sort of
grew into one another. I learned how many panels on a page was right
for how Rob tended to lay things out. I learned what kind of action he
could draw best and where his skills lay in character acting. With all
of that knowledge, I would tailor how I was telling my story to fit his
strengths, which is what you should always do in comics.
Now
that Rob has moved on to IRON MAN (I am so jealous he gets to spend all
day with Iron Man. I love Iron Man, in case the fact that I keep having
him show up in MS. MARVEL didn't tip anybody off), I'm learning
where Aaron's skills lie. I'm always a couple of scripts ahead, Aaron's
first two issues were written before Rob left the book. I'm watching
how Aaron is handling all the various elements of the story and
adjusting accordingly as I write issue 15.
For those who don't know Aaron's work, check out WHAT IF? AVENGERS DISASSEMBLED from a couple weeks back. His rendition of Ms. Marvel in that book is why he got the MS. MARVEL gig when Rob left to go drink with Tony Stark all day.
How
did you and Brian Bendis co-write Illuminati? How do you work with
another writer and avoid stepping on each other's toes? How much of
Illuminati was you and how much was him?
Bendis and I first worked together when I was lead game designer on ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN. We wrote that game story together and that led to us co-writing SPIDER-WOMAN: ORIGIN.
First and foremost, Brian Bendis is a joy to work with. We both have
such different storytelling beliefs (he's very character-centric, I'm
very plot-centric) that we complement one another nicely.
There's
really not a lot of toe stepping going on. We'll talk on the phone, or
while playing a game on Xbox Live and we'll hash through a plot. Then
one of us will go off and write a rough first pass and toss it to the
other.
If anything, the weird part is giving up a script after
a rough draft. I'm used to writing something, then ignoring it for a
few days while I write something else. I'll come back and look at the
first project then and see all the warts and nasty bits that need
refining. In a co-writing situation, you just pass all that ugliness
off to the other guy, who then thinks you're a hack and wonders how you
ever got a job as a writer.
ILLUMINATI, just like
everything else we've done together, is such a mix of us both that I
have a hard time pointing to specific things and saying "that's me" or
"that's Bendis." It's possible, but difficult, since one of us will
think of a great scene, but the other one is the guy that sells it with
the dialog. Or we'll both re-write a scene three or four times each
until its lineage is lost in the ether.
What other projects does Marvel have in store for you?
There's
something pretty nice in the works, but it hasn't had much movement of
late. I will say I'm excited as can be, and I don't think it's anything
anyone is expecting.
Do you have any dream projects you've been trying to pitch? Pretend I'm Joe Quesada for a minute and give me your best ideas.
Cloak
& Dagger, man. I want those guys to be as big and huge as they
should be. They are such a cool pair of characters with really amazing
powers and personalities and they're barely being used at all these
days. |
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