While New York Comic Con was now seemingly years ago, while there we had the chance to sit down and talk to “Avengers Arena” and NOW “Avengers Undercover” writer Dennis Hopeless. Arena has been one of the big surprises of the year for us, telling an engaging, exciting story with exceptional character work and brilliant art throughout. With the book coming to an end with issue #18, we were forlorn at the prospect of it going away. Thankfully, Marvel, Hopeless and series artist Kev Walker revealed “Undercover” at NYCC, so our sadness went away.
We talked to Hopeless about that book, the end of Arena, the surprising response to his work, the potential for more creator-owned work by him in the future, and more.
The big announcement for you is the continuation in a way of Avengers Arena. You’re going to have Avengers Undercover with Kev Walker, your partner in crime more often than not on Arena. How did this book come to be? What can you tell us about it?
Hopeless: We knew Avengers Arena was going to be an 18-issue story. That was the goal. If it sold well enough, we’d get 18 issues, and we definitely wanted to do something coming out of it, but we didn’t know what it would be.
It sort of just happened by bouncing ideas back and forth between me, Kev and Bill Rosemann, the editor of the book. We came up with the idea to do a sort of PTSD book for the kids who survived the arena. What’s the next thing? We came up with a story that the world now knows them as the kids that survived this horrible thing and did these terrible things on Murder World Island. They want to change the story. They want to change the narrative.
So they concoct this plan to invade the Masters of Evil and infiltrate them undercover and try to bring them down from the inside. The drama of the book comes from the fact that, now that they’ve gone through Avengers Arena, through Murder World, they fit in better with the villains than the heroes.
It really fits, especially for someone like Hazmat who started with Avengers Academy, a group who were supposed to be the next villains. You have her, and an array of others like the Braddock Academy Kids and Cammi, your girl. How did you choose the team?
Hopeless: Part of it was what characters survived Arena. It was planned out pretty tightly from the beginning, so I knew who all the deaths were and who was going to come out the other end of it. We had a roster of those, and X-23 had already been called for another book, so she wasn’t going to be in the book. From there it was asking, “what made sense?” What characters made sense to bring it.
I guess I won’t say the other characters I won’t choose because it spoils Arena, but it was what characters did I want to use, what ones were still alive, and what characters made sense for the story.
Well you’ve obviously been pretty blessed for artistic partners on Arena. They all kick ass, with Kev Walker being a personal favorite, then Allesandro Vitti, Karl Moline, you name it. They are awesome. Walker is coming over to the book with you. What makes him such a great partner for what you’re trying to do?
Hopeless: Kev makes all of us look better. He doesn’t just draw the book, he takes the script and analyzes every piece of it. If he doesn’t buy it, he won’t draw it. He’s a 100% collaborator on everything. He keeps me honest, and he reenvisions the action sequences to make them better. Everything Kev does makes the book 100% better. I couldn’t be more excited to have him coming aboard.
You went into Arena with it being an ongoing, but a finite ongoing. Is that the plan for Undercover, or is it more of a free flowing, see where it goes type thing?
Hopeless: It doesn’t have as finite an ending as Arena did. I have a short version of the story and a long version, and depending on sales and where everyone’s lives go in the next year or two, it will vary in length. But that was kind of how Arena was. We knew we had an 18-issue story to tell. If it had sold 4 times as much as it did, it probably would have become a 36-issue story. If it didn’t sell at all, we would have done a 10 or 12 issue version.
Continued belowI have a really good firm grasp on the first arc, and kind of loosely figured it out from there. We’ll expand or contract based on how the story goes.
The cast of Arena…the Braddock Academy kids are all you. From what I heard, there was a Cullen Bloodstone cosplayer this weekend?
Hopeless: It was amazing! There was a Cullen Bloodstone and the guy’s girlfriend or wife was dressed as Elsa. It was the most amazing cosplay pairing of my life.
That is amazing. Obviously, people are really invested in these characters. It involved Runaways, Avengers Academy, X-23, Darkhawk, even though he’s an immortal teenager or whatever (laughter), how do you balance getting people to know the new characters like Cullen and Anachronism to make people value their lives when they’re on the line vs. the others?
Hopeless: It’s an interesting challenge on the book because I know more people know about X-23 and her background than the new characters or the Runaways, so when I did the X-23 POV issue I didn’t want to spend a lot of time doing backstory. Half the people reading aren’t going to be interested.
But with the new characters, no one knows anything, so I got to jump deeper into their heads. The balancing act came on the other side, though. When you’re doing a Runaways issue, how much about their history, how much page time do you spend on their history? A lot of people are reading the book because they’re in it, and they know that stuff.
So it was easy to make the Braddock Academy kids three-dimensional because I could spend a lot of time on who they were and the mystery of their personalities and powers and stuff.
You get to build them from the start, as opposed to everyone with the history to build off of. Obviously the history is strong. You had a lot of vocal people talking about the book. It seems like a lot of people have turned, a lot of people are invested now. I love reading the letters because when you look at the first letters you have rage, but as you move along, “I used to rage but now I love.” What has been the most surprising thing about your experience on Avengers Arena?
Hopeless: At first as far as fan reaction was concerned, I was really surprised by how upset people got. We got a lot of letters…the first two issues, all of those letters came before the book came out. Those were reactions to the title being announced and the first interview we did. There was a lot of hot heat coming my way before the book came out.
Then the book came out, and there was still hate but people liked it. At this point, the best part is a lot of the hate has subsided. I am sure there are a lot of people who still hate me. There always have been. (laughter) We only hear from people now who loved it from the beginning or whose minds we changed. Changing peoples minds is the best thing you can do.
One thing I wanted to ask was recently Skottie Young tweeted some images from a project you guys were apparently working on, and the pages were beautiful and he talked about how it was a project he was really excited for once upon a time, but you guys had to abandon it. Are there any plans to make it happen?
Hopeless: We both really want to. It’s a book called “Lake Rats” right before Skottie had his son, and immediately when you have a child, you apparently don’t have as much time to work on personal projects (laughter). Skottie had to step away from it, and we talked recently about picking it back up. We both really liked the project and would love to do something. I would always work with Skottie on anything.
We definitely would love to read that. You’re doing Avengers Arena, soon to be Avengers Undercover, you’re doing Cable and the X-Force. You started off on creator-owned. Do you see in the future going back in that direction, or do you look at is as really enjoying your Marvel work and balance it with creator-owned?
Hopeless: I’d love to do some more creator-owned. I love working at Marvel, and I can pay my bills working at Marvel so it is a lot easier doing it that way. This past year I took on a lot of work all at once when I was fairly new to doing it for a living. My first six months freelancing I got two ongoings right after doing my first Marvel work. It was a really stressful year from a schedule standpoint because I had never done that as a big boy before.
Now that has cooled off a little bit and I can write my script a week and do it as a job and get up in the morning and put pants on (laughter). Now I’m starting to think of doing more creator-owned and going back…I have lots of plates spinning, projects I was planning on doing before Marvel came calling. I will do those as I continue to do Marvel work over the next few years.
