When the most beloved Olympian of all time falls, who will mourn him? In Incredible Hercules #141 we saw the death of the Lion of the Olympus, and this week, from the minds that brought you Thorcules, we have the next entry in the Incredible Hercules uber-arc. Fall of An Avenger, a two issue mini, tells us the story of the most epic funeral of all time. Immediately following this will be the Prince of Power mini, a Heroic Age story of Amadeus Cho and where he is post-Assault on New Olympus. And it’s all brought to you from the minds of Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente!
Today, I am very pleased to present to you my interview with Fred Van Lente, where we sit down and talk about just that. We talk about Fall of an Avenger and the upcoming mini Prince of Power, as well as Iron Man Legacy and the upcoming Cowboys and Aliens movie. It’s a really great interview with something for everyone.
You can also get the full audio interview from our podcast, featuring a couple extras not included in this transcription!
Oh, and don’t forget to pick up Hercules: Fall of an Avenger #1, on sale this week. Fred promises that you’ll love it.
My first question is: How DARE you?!
Hahaha! Well-
AND! On top of that, you can’t blame this on Athena again.
Uh… well, sure I can! I guess to answer the first part of your question: I dare all! You know? If you’re a brave writer, if you’re an artisticly minded writer, there are really no limits, so anything you think will make an effective story is acceptable. And that certainly was the case here with Hercules’ unfortunate demise.
I would definitely call it unfortunate! So, knowing when you guys were going into it, that you and Pak had made this character really popular to a brand new audience, was it difficult writing it knowing that he’d be dead soon?
You know, it wasn’t really difficult until I actually sat down and wrote the final scene between him and Athena. I got a little verklempt. That’s kind of the first time that’s really happened to me, where I had such an emotional scene that really, you know, effected me that viscerally, because I’m with you. I certainly was someone who never really got into the Marvel Hercules that much until, you know, we started researching this series when it took over Incredible Hulk, so yeah it was very difficult. I mean, its definitely not the kind of thing you do lightly. It’s a pay-off we’ve been planning for several years, and obviously we’ve been hinting at it since about… I think about issue 126, where Athena says, “If Hercules dies, I’m just going to replace him with Amadeus.” So.. you know… it didn’t EXACTLY come out of left field, hahaha.
So you really did start right off the bat knowing that he would be dead, right when you took over from Hulk?
We had figured out, Greg and I… the thing about Incredible Hercules is it was originally sold to me and Greg as basically a four issue arc of Incredible Hulk, because Incredible Hulk was going to end anyway. You know? They were giving the strip to Jeph Loeb and Ed McGuinness, and they were going to do their own book with Hulk #1. So Incredible Hulk was always done for, but they had the idea of — first they wanted us to do a Renegade series (that is all the heroes who supported Hulk during World War Hulk), so that was Amadeus and Hercules as well as the new Scorpion and Angel and Namoria. But they decided they didn’t want another team book, so someone suggested the idea of doing an Amadeus/Herc buddy book, and that kind of mutated from there into, “Well, why don’t we just turn it into Incredible Herc?” Which I would ‘ve liked better, but then we found out they were going to down Incredible Hercules… which is cool, which is fine. It’s grown on me. But that was four issues, and then the response was really great both critically and commercially, so they asked us to do another arc, and that became the Sacred Invasion arc. That actually sold better than the FIRST arc, so then we got a full blown series, and at that point, with the ending of Sacred Invasion, we pretty much… that’s when we came up with this overall uber-arc, so.. not QUITE from the beginning, but… six issues in? Seven issues in? Something like that.
Continued belowThat’s still pretty quick into the run, that you’re planning that far ahead! So that’s good. From the takeover from Hulk all the way up to Assault, what do you think is YOUR favorite arc, and what do you think was the most popular arc out of all of them? If I had to bet, I would probably put my money on Thorcules arc. That’s just me!
As the most popular? Well, if you go by sheer numbers, we never topped the Sacred Invasion arc. That was definitely the most popular in terms of sheer numbers. Yes, you’re right, the Thorcules one is really popular. A lot of people like Love and War. I know Love and War is Greg’s favorite arc. My favorite arc is probably, I’m going to have to go with the masses and say Sacred Invasion just because it had the most Marvel-y madness in it with all the different Pantheons, and working in classic characters and concepts like the Eternals and Nightmare, and I really enjoyed that. Although, second would be Thorcules combined with the Amadeus arc as one unit. I thought that came across really well.
I really liked what you did with Amadeus in Excello, Utah, but I never know what to call that. And since it ran at the same time as Thorcules, I always just kind of lump them together in my head.
Yeah, that’s what the collection is called. So that’s fine! I think that online, on the covers it was the Secret Origin of Amadeus Cho, but that’s a really long title. And really, they were always meant to be read simultaneously, with playing back and forth.
It’s interesting that you mention Sacred Invasion because, looking back on it now as a reader of the book, that obviously is going to have pay-off more in the future than we had originally assumed with Mikaboshi taking over at the end.
Indeed! And the consequences of that have not even be fully felt yet… but they will be.
So, with the Fall of an Avenger title for Hercules, you mentioned (with the takeover of Hulk), and I was just kind of curious: with the set-up that you guys have for it now, where Incredible Hercules is done and we have a two-issue mini and then we have a relaunch with Prince of Power, why did you guys decide to do that instead of just moving it forward in Incredible Herc and then maybe changing the title to Incredible Amadeus? Or something like that.
I was personally always kind of uncomfortable with… it would have been different if we didn’t already have Incredible Hulk. If Incredible Hulk didn’t come back, I would be less on board with the plan as it stands. But I think that because Incredible Hulk is back with it’s 600 plus issues, the Hercules numbering and the Hercules title seem a little wonky to me, so I kinda wanted to move. I definitely supported when marketing asked us to do it this way. I definitely supported it because it moves us into a more unique space and we’re not quite as dependant on the Hulk. So that’s… part of is that it’s now it’s own thing, which I like.
With Fall of an Avenger, I know a lot of finales are usually just one issue, and even funeral moments of titles are one issue… but Fall of an Avenger is two! So… I’m guessing this is not a normal sort of eulogy we’ve got going on?
It is not! There are definitely two distinct parts. The simplest sort of way to categorize them is one involves the heroes, and one involves the Gods. Because Hercules, you know, exists on both those levels. And we wanted the time to sort of explore both those sides of him.
And then straight from there, we move directly into the Prince of Power, starting in May?
Yes. That sounds correct.
When we look at Prince of Power, and even we look at Incredible Hercules, I think it’s really interesting that, for a large part of that book, the story has been about Amadeus instead of Hercules (especially now in retrospect). So much of it is his growth as a character and now we have his ascension to full blown hero instead of just a braniac character. At what point in Herc did you really start writing this as an Amadeus Cho book, versus just a buddy book or an Incredible Hercules book?
Well, from the very beginning, I like to say (and I think I’ve said this in a couple interviews, maybe not too loudly for fear of being slapped) Amadeus has always been the main character of Incredible Hercules. It’s his journey that is the primary one, in the sense that Herc is his mentor and now his role model. It wasn’t really until we sat down to write Prince of Power #1 that Greg and I kind of looked at each other and went, hey! This really works! I mean, its one thing that he’s really smart with the equations floating around his head, but now he’s got Herc’s adamantine mace, and because of various events going on in Fall of the Hulks and World War Hulks and Greg’s other books, he has all this technology from Bruce Banner. So he’s no longer just this sort of snarky kid who can say “punch that guy there!” Now he can do the punching by himself and he’s enhanced with technology and magic, so he’s a very formidable unique character, and I really the way Riley Brown redesigned him with the suit and tie and the mace. I just love that.
I love his new character design. It’s not a very traditional superhero outfit, but it works for him, I think.
It reminds me of… it’s a funny thing, if you’ve ever read Matt Wagner’s Mage and Kevin Matchstick (I think I’m remembering the character’s name correctly….) always just ran around with just a black t-shirt with a lightning bolt on it and a baseball bat. I always thought that was… to me this is the slight more J. Crew version of that.
So when I was reading the press release for Prince of Power, you stated that this was arc 7 of 8 in the uber story as you call it?
Indeed, combined with Fall of Herc. Fall of Herc and Prince of Power are basically two parts of the same arc.
With that in mind, how much of this is a pay-off for people who have been reading Herc the entire time, and how much of it is a place for new fans to hop in with the big Marvel relaunch of the Heroic Age?
It’s both. I mean, I think that it really should be both, and we’re trying to have it be both. It is, you know, volume 7 of a multi-volume uber-superhero/mythology story, but by the same token it IS Amadeus Cho with all these news powers and with this new position in life and this new job as myth slayer… you know, what Hercules was in olden times, Amadeus is now, and it’s his job to go out and slay and battle gigantic monstrous beasts. And I think that hook is fairly interesting in and of itself to the outside reader, particularly because Greg is very active in the Asian-American media community and May actually (believe it or not) is Asian-American Awareness/History month, and so we’re definitely going to try and do a push along those lines because it’s unusual for Marvel or any company to have an Asian-American action hero star in a comic book whose name isn’t Shang-Chi. That’s definitely an aspect that we want to promote, that it breaks the mold and certain stereotypes.
So you were saying that the initial arc of Prince of Power is gonna be Amadeus off fighting monsters and giants and mythical beasts that he had never gone up against alone?
This is what Athena wants him to do…
But that doesn’t mean that’s what HE’S gonna do!
Amadeus has another mission! Because he is Amadeus, and he has a mind of his own… but I can’t really reveal the nature of that mission too much until you read Fall of an Avenger, at which point it’ll become fairly obvious.
Ahh…
And it causes him to run afoul of the other pantheons, most particularly Thor who is a major character in Prince of Power.
Given that you were pushing both characters (Amadeus and Herc) in a certain direction, was it difficult to share the two of them with Dan Slott and his run of Mighty Avengers?
Continued belowOh no, not at all! Quite the opposite. He’s a great person. He definitely is a wise ass just like me and Greg and definitely took them immediately. We were just happy that he asked us, where Amadeus and Herc were the only characters in Mighty Avengers who also had their own book. So it was interesting kind of coordinating things there, and Dan pointed out to me that there are some aspects of Mighty Avengers and New Avengers and Hercules and all these various things where the stuff just does not link up at all. It makes no sense in terms of continuity. …but who cares! It’s different people interacting with each other.
It was nice because, the last issue of Mighty Avengers, both Amadeus and Herc split off, and that’s what makes it nice for continuity’s sake.
Right. …did the last issue of Mighty come out yet?
Not the final FINAL issue.
Oh, you mean the most recent! Gotcha.
Yeah, where they go up against Loki, and then Thor comes around and is like, “Let go of my brother!” And then at the end of it, Pym asks Loki to join and everyone’s like, “Alright. I quit. I’m done.”
Right.
Given that May is The Heroic Age and all these books have this nice new Heroic Age banner, and Amadeus is the HERO for the Heroic Age, how much of his story ties in to the whole big story of the Heroic Age? I know it’s not a full interlocking story, but thematically.
Thematically it’s very important because the God’s have prophesized that Amadeus will be the most important hero of the Heroic Age, which nobody including Amadeus Cho believes. Events may prove them right or wrong! The God’s have other options like Thor or Iron Man and Cap, the trinity of Avengers (who appear, by the way, in Prince of Power #1). But yeah, it has a lot to do with the Heroic Age, and again, it has a lot to do with the events spiraling out of World War Hulks, because Amadeus plays a major role in that. And Banner kind of owes him as a result of that, so you’re going to see a lot of Bruce Banner in Prince of Power as well. It’s very much integrated in the Marvel Universe. And earlier I referred to slaying beasts and monsters? Well, in the Marvel Universe in the modern era, beasts and monsters aren’t necessarily magical in nature. They’re super villainous in nature, so you’ve got a lot of guys like Gryphon for example, who has mysteriously been hyper powered and is laying waste to the American mid-west and Amadeus has to stop him when Prince of Power #1 opens. As per usual with us, it’s this melding of mythological and super hero imagery.
This could probably just be a pipe dream of mine, but with Prince of Power: what are the chances of Amadeus’ old pup making a comeback in some way? Is it slim to none?
Hahaha. I could be coy, but the answer is none. He’s living with his mate somewhere in Arizona and making puppies.
It makes sense, but a fan can dream. I think.
In your fan fiction, the pup will come back.
So we don’t have the pup, and we don’t have Hercules, but I think one of the great things about the title was, like you were saying, it was sort of a buddy comedy type book, while being a really great story in general. So is Amadeus gonna get any sort of character to go up with? Some kind of peppy sidekick?
He is! A peppy Norse Thunder God, who is looking in on his old buddies ward sort of Webster style. But he almost ends up being more of a sidekick to Amadeus than Amadeus was to Hercules.
You know… I like that? I’m really looking forward to that one now.
It’s pretty fun. And Riley Brown, who is drawing the series and also drew the Thorcules arc, draws a killer Asgardian.
You are in charge of a brand new Iron Man title, and it exists in between cracks of continuity with the normal Iron Man title. How did this come about?
Well, the folks at Marvel felt like the casual fan, both in the comic book store and the book store, with all the additional attention Iron Man is going to get with Iron Man 2, they should have a new title to jump on board with on the ground level without necessarily needing to know everything, because Matt Fraction has wonderfully integrated Iron Man so closely with the Marvel Universe. The casual fan may also want a book that is a little more self contained, that doesn’t necessarily involve whatever Norman Osborn and Steve Rogers are doing. And it’s a chance to revisit classic eras in Iron Man’s history. Ralph Macchio, who is the Iron Man group editor, approached me partially because we worked together on Wolverine: First Class, which was a kid’s book and was also another in between continuity series. I think he liked what he did there, so I got the assignment and obviously (well, maybe not obviously… in fact I don’t think he knew this when he offered me the job) this is actually my second Iron Man on-going. I was the writer on the Marvel Adventures Iron Man book, right before the first movie.
How similar in structure is Iron Man Legacy to the structure of something like X-Men Legacy, or even the Astonishing Line which Marvel is really promoting these days?
I don’t know about Astonishing… X-Men Legacy is great because it’s basically a Professor X centric book, so it’s taking — well, I guess now Mike’s moved on more to Rogue and the other cast members. But the thing about Iron Man Legacy, which I guess is like Astonishing, is you’re trying to distill the character down to his essence and really figure out what makes them tick. Because we are not constrained by the continuity of whatever else happens to be going on in the Marvel Universe at the time. I think we’re able to choose storylines from different eras of Iron Man that really sort of define that. As planned, Iron Man Legacy arc by arc actually goes backwards in time through Iron Man’s history. So the first arc, War of the Iron Men, is set really recently, but the next one is set, at least in terms of publishing history, a couple decades before, and I desperately want to do a “just starting out” Tony Stark as Iron Man thing.
Are we going to see specific changes in visuals for the book? As you go backwards in time, does Iron Man’s costume regress?
Oh yeah. One of the original working titles for this book was The Many Armors Of Iron Man, which I’m glad they changed. It’s a little unwieldy. Part of the idea that I would like to say is, Tony Stark is like James Bond except he’s better than James Bond because James Bond doesn’t invent all of his gadgets. Tony Stark does. So he’s always trying to experiment with new powers and new weapons and new gadgets, so you’re going to see Tony in the series go through more armors than Paris Hilton goes through shoes. It’s gonna be different. So far in each issue, he has a different armor… he has four different armors in the first two issues.
I think that’s awesome. I think it makes sense.
Steve Kurth is just designing the crap out of them, and they look awesome.
What kind of Tony Stark character can we expect in this book? It seems that we really have two Tony Starks as of late. There’s the dark and torn man that’s reeling from the fallout of Civil War and Secret Invasion, and then you also have the more jovial “Hey, it’s noon, let’s go get drunk!” Tony Stark who might appear on a show like Mad Men.
Right, exactly. He’s got a little cigarette sticking out of his helmet as he’s flying around. “Chesterfields! The filter on my mouth piece prevents me from getting cancer!”
So which one is the star of your Iron Man title?
Well, it changes I think from arc to arc. To me, Tony, like Peter Parker, is a fundamentally moral person dealing with poor moral choices he’s made in the past. Except while Peter Parker has to deal with the death of his Uncle Ben, Tony Stark has to deal with the thousands upon thousands of people who have died at the hands of his weapons. So part of the reason he becomes Iron Man in the first place is to redeem himself for that. But, in War of the Iron Men, somehow in a small Balkan State, para-military militias get a hold of Iron Man armor and they go ethnic cleansing with it. So when Iron Man decides to intervene personally in this conflict, after the US government tells him not to get involved, this creates a massive international incident pulling in the Russians and the Chinese and their various champions (including Radioactive Man, one of my personal favorites) as well as Crimson Dynamo and Titanium Man, as well as a classic Iron Man villain from the Bob Layton/David Michelinie run that I think everyone will be excited to see. That’s the big “last page reveal” of #1.
Continued belowI’m already excited, not gonna lie!
The artwork is just amazing. I mean, I almost feel bad covering it in word balloons. But if I don’t, they don’t pay me!
When we look at the continuity of this book because it’s still a canon title, if you kill off Pepper Potts in issue 1, Fraction has to get behind? Like, if you take some really large character stance, will that flow out to every other Iron Man piece going on anywhere in the Marvel U?
Yeah, in theory, but… I’m not gonna kill Pepper Potts. I don’t want angry phone calls from Gwenyth Paltrow for one thing.
But it’s nice that you have that option, finally! Like, you hold that high of a power now.
What’s that?
I just think that it must be fun that you have that option now.
Well … yes. As far as the editor’s allow me to exercise.
And Steve Kurth on the title — that must be really awesome. I don’t know if you have (you probably did) read the Ultimate Comics Armor Wars mini with Warren Ellis? His Iron Man in that was absolutely fantastic, so how did it come about that you’re working with him on this title now?
I think, again, the assigned it to Steve on the strength of Ultimate Comics Armor War, and through sort of a lucky happenstance, Steve and I were able to meet face to face when he came here to Marvel Studios in New York, and we were able to exchange notes, we talked on the phone a lot, and we’re really kind of mind melding on this one. It’s really kind of awesome.
How far are the two of you planning to go with the title?
Well, I have three arcs, which is about fifteen issues. So we’ll see if we get there!
I hope you do. I already have my issue 1 pre-ordered, so I’m excited.
My last topic here is a little bit looser, but it’s something that I as a fan want to know. I actually (I don’t know how many people can say this that I know), but I actually managed to find a copy of Cowboys and Aliens.
Excellent!
How does it feel — because this is a really early work for you — how does it feel to have it be turned into a feature film?
It’s really exciting! I’m not really that involved in the production. Platinum is very good about keeping me updated, as well as my co-writer Andrew Foley keeping me up to date about what’s going on with the production, including secret casting news I’m not allowed to tell you under fear of death. It’s neat. It’ll be really exciting to see the movie when it comes out, and at the moment I’m getting a lot of nice press obviously and compliments from my peers, which is always nice. But yeah, it’s cool. You know, it’s not the first time that something that I’ve done has been optioned for a movie, and not really the first time Cowboys and Aliens has seriously had a major deal going, but this definitely seems like it’s actually going to happen. So for me to get really jazzed I would have to actually see the movie or hear that they start shooting or whatever, but I’m very optimistic and everything that they’re doing sounds totally awesome.
This is something that I’ve always wanted to ask a creator who has a picture going through the works, and I’ve never gotten the opportunity until now: when you see the film in it’s final motion picture version, if it’s not maybe 99.9% like the comic you wrote, will that upset you? Or is that something that not really concerns you so much?
No, it really doesn’t. As you pointed it out, Cowboys and Aliens is an early work, and I’m sure there are lots of improvements that can be done to it. Given the credits of John Favreau and Daniel Craig and the screenwriters, I have every confidence that it’s all good stuff. Even if it wasn’t… I don’t really get up set unless I screw up, I guess is the best way of putting it, you know? Because I’ve never walked in the other guys shoes. So if I missed an opportunity or done poor work or just accepted a project I shouldn’t have and it doesn’t quite work out, THAT really bothers me. But it doesn’t really bother me so much when other people do stuff because I’m in the business so I know there’s lots of factors involved, so you can’t just say, “Oh that sucks!” I don’t have the luxury of being able to do that because I know it’s just really not that simple.
Continued belowSo you’re not going to end up going all Alan Moore on it, are you?
Hahahaha. No, I’ve never quite — well, I think Alan’s objection is less due to quality than it is contractual/moral issues. I don’t think it matters to him. I don’t think that the issue with the films that have been made from his work is that they’re bad. I think it’s probably different for each one.
Originally this film actually had Robert Downey Jr. in the lead, but now you have James Bond, Mr. Daniel Craig, as the main character which I think is awesome, and after now having read Cowboys and Aliens, I think he’s actually perfect for the role and much better than Downey Jr What’s your take on that? Would you have preferred Downey?
I think that Robert would’ve been great, especially with the humor aspect of it, but certainly Craig and some of his pre-James Bond British flicks, he’s done great for humor and stuff like that, and I think that assuming he gets the cowboy accent down right…. Maybe they’ll make a sequel, that’d be interesting. I think he’ll be awesome. And he’s going to have a terrific cast backing him too, so that’s always a plus.
Out of all the things you’ve done, is there anything else you’ve written that you’d like to see turned into a film? Because I actually just got a copy of Watchdogs. I haven’t read it yet, but I found it and immediately bought it.
That turned out really well! The Brian Churilla artwork turned out terrific in that book. That’d be a great film, and I have a super top secret project that I’m working on with Marvel that would make an absolutely perfect film from a character that you wouldn’t expect from (he’s a Marvel standby), and I hope the Marvel Left guys are reading this interview, and will know what I’m talking about when it comes out or when it’s announced.
Well I’m sure that when it’s announced then, I’ll probably contact you again from another interview, and then at the end we can talk about Watchdogs!
Exactly! Awesome.
My final question is the big relaxer question: how much longer do we as fans have to wait until the on-going comic of you and Dennis Calero as bears? Because you gave us a teaser, but I think the world needs more than that.
I don’t know! Well, Dennis will be very happy to hear that. It’s a good question because Dennis is on an on-going right now that’s very interesting by a very famous writer.
But it doesn’t feature you and him as bears.
Right, it does not feature either him or I as bears that’s true. He’s just gotta get off his ass and draw more of those.
