Last week, we were incredibly excited to share that Multiversity favorite Kieron Gillen had signed an exclusive deal with Marvel, and would now be co-writing Uncanny X-Men as well as writing Generation Hope by his lonesome. Talk about your love of mutants!
Almost the exact same time that we posted about his exclusive, I sent out an e-mail to Mr. Gillen with a few questions about his thoughts on signing to Marvel, the Uncanny X-Men process, some of his plans for Generation Hope, and his other planned work. We also find out exactly where you may (or may not) be seeing Phonogram again (don’t get your hopes too high, fans). So as details will certainly be coming up with his X-Men run in the future, we are more than pleased to give you a small sneak preview of the future work of Kieron Gillen!
Peep behind the cut for the interview!
First off, because I clearly haven’t said this enough and I’m sure you don’t get tired of hearing it: congrats on the exclusive deal with Marvel! We’re all so very proud of you! How does it feel to belong to the House of Ideas now?
I feel basically like Cinderella, inversed. My handsome Prince has taken me from horrible freedom, and put me in a wonderful silvery cellar full of chocolate hob-nobs, Kenickie B-sides and all my other favourite things.
The last time we chatted, you were incredibly passionate about the medium, had a few Marvel titles under your belt and were in the middle of Latverian Prometheus (Thor). Now that Thor is wrapped up and you’ve had your hand in a few more titles (like World War Hulks and Doctor Strange), has your process for writing comics changed at all? Or rather, how different is your writing when it comes to these established characters in a shared universe as opposed to your independent work now that you’re (presumably) more comfortable?
Oh, I’ve listened to a lot of Smiths records. I’m never “more comfortable”. I live on nerves. Nerves and chocolate hob-nobs. And I need to do something about the latter, or I won’t live for long.
Without digging out what I said to you last time, I’m a little more formal. I tend to work from a detailed synopsis and, from that, break into pages, write dialogue, arrange into a whole structure and hit it with a narrative hammer until it all vaguely works. It’s more about having written more, and thus being more comfortable with it. I remember when I was first doing self-published photo-copied comics, I could actually spend whatever free time I had in the evening doing a single page. Now, I’m just more comfortable in knowing what works and what doesn’t. Even when trying something a little more ambitious, I can throw it down later, and trust my instincts that it’ll work. Or at least, trust that when I come back to it in a few days and have another look, trust that I’ll pick up I was high on writer-juice and have a rewrite.
In reality, the assumption that the independent work is “more comfortable” isn’t entirely right. Phonogram was never a comfortable book to do. It was painful and messed up, and a whole mass of hard work. The masters on Phonogram were far more unforgiving than mere triffling elements like decades of continuity.
I think I’m in a good place, basically. I’m pleased with the last year, and the work I’ve put out. Now I’m in an actively self-analytical stage to see where I want to push, and what areas I can up my game. Complacency will kill you, artistically if in no other ways.
So – you’ve tackled gods. You’ve gone to space. You’ve had Thor and Spider-Man hit each other in the face. Now you’re attached to Marvel’s premiere book of mutants: Uncanny X-Men. Not only that, but you’ll be writing the new ongoing title Generation Hope, dealing with the five mutants that “lit up” at the end of Second Coming. Is it safe to say that you’re a big fan of the mutants?
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I’m more fond of the mutants than most of my friends. Which isn’t saying much, because i) I don’t like my friends and ii) they’re all mutants anyway. Moral mutants, mainly, but it counts.
I’m trying to let mutants possess my thoughts as much as I let mythology possess it when I was writing Thor. By the end of Thor, I’d somehow convinced myself I was primarily a fantasy writer who could never write anything in another genre. As the method-acting leaked away, I recognised that wasn’t really true. Convincing myself of necessary truths is part of the gig — the commitment to it, and the characters. I’m realigning the gears of personality-vehicle Gillen into more useful X-friendly shapes, more social-futurist-soapist than meta-mythy. The X-men, more than most books, have to react to the age they find themselves. It’s a book about the future and what that means anyway. There’s a reason why that it’s a book which has collected such a grand array of alternate futures.
Even before all that — yeah, I loved the X-men. As a kid, they were a core thing I dug. When I got back into comics, it was that around-2000 period where Morrison was doing his thing. In terms of big mainstream books, it was the one which defined that time in my head.
With Uncanny X-Men, you’ll be joining up with Matt Fraction as co-writer of the title. How did this partnership come about?
Matt and I were already collaborating in terms of creating the Five Lights for Uncanny X-men and Generation Hope. We’d been going and forth so much, there was a basis of a working relationship anyway. We’d had worked out the basic shape of the origins for all five before we even decided which of the five mutants would be my first arc and which four would be used in Uncanny. Of course, our execution varied, but the core was there. And before all that, we were friends anyway, and often shared thoughts about what we were up to. When Marvel suggested it, it seemed to make a lot of sense.
How is the process of writing the book for you going to change, now that you’re not alone in the plot and scripting of the book? How different is it to work with Fraction?
Honestly, we’re still finding our way with it. The Quarantine arc already had its grand structure there when I arrived, so it became a question of specific execution.
While the plot is obviously very secret at the moment, I do notice one rather big thing about the solicit: you’re bringing back Sublime in full. How did the decision to use him as a villain for your first arc come about? I remember him being briefly mentioned in the Nation X arc before you were on the book.
As you guess, I can’t say much about that — but it does build off what Matt did with Nation X, and so the groundwork is his. It’s playing with some very specific parts about Sublime as a villain. He casts a long shadow.
In addition to the Uncanny duties, you’ll be working on Generation Hope by yourself as mentioned before. What do you have planned for the book intially?
The problem of the fifth light. Kenji Uedo of Tokyo has been left to his own devices longest. As we’ve seen in Uncanny, they’re having problems until Hope stabilises them. Kenji’s problems have had longest to stew. If anything could go wrong with him, it will go wrong with him.
Suffice to say: things go wrong, and Cyclops, Hope, Rogue, Wolverine and the lights have to sort it out. Hopefully someone will survive, or the book’s going to have problems continuing.
Generation Hope gives the impression of being a “young character team” book, similar to past titles like Young X-Men or New X-Men. Do you plan for the book to be more about developing these new and young characters over just running around and hitting things?
Oh, you can have both. Hitting things is the workhorse metaphor of the superhero genre.
While there’s obvious similarities to previous young-character-coming-of-age books, it’s a little more antagonistic to their elders and would-be teachers. Antagonistic may be too strong, but they lack a natural subservience. Even after stabilisation, these young mutants feel different to all those before them. They’re bonded together, and with Hope. The generation gap is very pure, and their first loyalty isn’t to the X-men, but the red-haired girl who people tend to call a Messiah.
Working out what that actually means and what’s it for is one of the things which drive the book.
How did you and Matt Fraction decide to split these new characters off to their own story with Hope after their introduction in Uncanny X-Men, and how isolated is the title going to remain considering you’re working both?
We created them with it in mind, basically. As in, a team-book about Hope and her new generation of mutants. They’re an agreeably balanced — and imbalanced — bunch.
Being on both books means that I could do lots of “soft” interaction without necessarily being as brutal as an official crossover. I know where both books are in any month, so if I can work out gentle resonances from operating in the same shared universe, I will — without compromising the integrity of either book. Remember around Siege I was writing New Mutants, Thor and the Loki Special? All three were their own stories and could be read individually. However, if you did read them all, you realised some of the larger picture and get a sort of symphonic resonance for it all.
In other words, I want to use it to help both books without hurting either. Which is easy to say, but is the sort of thing I enjoy.
In addition to all of your mutant related plans, is there anything else you’d like to do in the world of the super heroic? Perhaps an extended Dazzler story, or – harking back to that last interview again – I seem to remember you coming up with an “Emma Frost and Doctor Doom stuck in a lift”, and I haven’t seen it in any books yet but you did just join up Uncanny, so…
Heh. I’d forgotten that one.
Dazzler actually is pretty heavily in Matt and my first arc. Alas, she won’t be stuck in a lift with Doctor Doom. I’ll probably save that for the second arc.
I remember last time we chatted you mentioned you will be working on one outside Marvel book on Avatar called “the Heat”. Any additional details you can let out on that one yet, or is it still a mostly under wraps book?
All the six issues are in the can, and the first issue is drawn. We’re basically getting a lot of it done before soliciting it — so I’ll probably best save talking about it seriously for a little longer, as I wouldn’t want to tease people stupidly in advance.
In short: R-rated Science-fiction Police action-drama set on Mercury. Hence, The Heat. Works off three key parts — the science-fiction sober-Dredd-esque world-building, state-of-the-art action sequences and the frustrations of the lead. I think people will dig it.
As a final question, how long do you think it’ll be before you cave into fan demands and make David Kohl an X-Man?
Kid-with-knife first, then we’ll worry about Kohl.
