Mike Carey validates rumors that he will be leaving adjectiveless, in addition to working on his other project:
http://www.livewireworld.com/review/archive/mike_carey_201.htm
This link refers to Mike's new book: X-Men Legacy
http://www.livewireworld.com/review/interviews.htm
Mike Carey
Managing Editor Ian Murphy talks to the prolific writer about his forthcoming new X-book and his work on Ultimate Fantastic Four, X-Men, Endangered Species and more
LWW: The first thing that hit me when I came to Birmingham, the first thing I saw about the convention was this amazing cover of What’s On [a local guide to events in the Birmingham area that usually gives prominence to theatre and live music]. How does it feel to know that it’s the cover of your comic – Ultimate Fantastic Four #47 - that’s been used to advertise this weekends convention?
MC: It was a real thrill. I didn’t see it myself until this morning. I love the image, and to see it there on the cover of a mainstream media guide was just wonderful. It’s great that comics are coming out of the ghetto and becoming accepted in the mainstream.
This is the first issue of the new arc of Ultimate Fantastic Four. Can you sum up what that’s about for us, please?
It’s called Ghosts and it’s our Red Ghost arc, obviously. It’s one of the most enjoyable aspects of writing UFF – going back to the original Lee/Kirby stories and cherry picking, choosing the stories that blew your mind when you were a kid and reinventing them for a modern audience. I’ll never forget the origin story of the Red Ghost – how cool he seemed as a character, how scary he was. He deliberately exposed himself to cosmic rays where the FF were accidentally exposed. He got a bigger dose and he was more powerful. You start off from that position of unstoppable superiority, plus he was Russian and he was Communist – strange and unknowable.
We’re approaching the character from an oblique angle. We do have the Red Ghost and we do have the Super Apes but they come into existence in a different way and there are lots of things about the way the story plays out that I think are unexpected.
The arc with Psychoman has just finished, which contained a lovely little surprise, the Silver Surfer being the herald of someone other than Galactus and taken in a completely different way. I’m curious as to what degree the story was a dialogue with Christianity, with the plot being about freedom of choice and agency and so forth?
It was not at the forefront of my mind but as you know from Lucifer and elsewhere it is an issue – a whole core of ideas there – that exercise my mind a lot. Free will and predestination is at the heart of Lucifer, and the place of faith, the place of religion in people’s lives, both on an individual, psychological level and on a broader, social level, it’s something that I think about a lot and write about a lot so you can see it as my old obsession resurfacing again in a different context.
Is it true you’ll be leaving Ultimate Fantastic Four before long?
Yes. I can’t give you chapter and verse but I’ll be there for issue #50, which will be very cool, and for a while after that, and I think it’s fair to say we’ll go out on a very high note. The last story – the story we start in issue #50 – is called Four Cubed, which tells you a certain amount about what we’ll be doing there.
Do you know what your last issue number will be?
I do, but I probably shouldn’t tell you before Marvel announce it themselves.
I know you’re a big fan of Doctor Strange. I just wondered if there’s any particular reason why you didn’t get to write his chapters of Endangered Species?
It was just the way the logistics played out. I did the overview, the planning of the story, in conjunction with the X-Men editors, and then it was a question of the timing of the individual issues, which is of course very tight with one coming out every week for the 17 weeks leading up to Messiah CompleX. There wasn’t much margin for error there. The way it panned out I wrote approximately half of the episodes and I have to admit I did choose the ones that I thought were irresistible. I’d have loved to have written the Doctor Strange ones, but I couldn’t do everything. I have a pitch worked up with Pablo Raimondi for a Doctor Strange story which we’d still like to happen at some point.
But if you look at the arcs that I did steal for myself, I kickstart the whole thing, I do the scenes with the Guthries, I do the scenes with Wanda at the end, they were all things … I was irresistibly drawn to those character dynamics, to those beats.
Speaking of pitches, I understand you pitched an Omega Flight book, is that right?
No, that’s not true. I was talking at one stage about possibly doing an arc on Omega Flight, I was talking to John Barber, and it was a cool idea and I said I’d love to do it, but I realized once I started thinking about it that actually I didn’t have anything much to say about those characters. The inspiration just didn’t come. After kicking some ideas around that never really went anywhere I talked to him and told him I couldn’t do it at this stage. Not that the characters aren’t cool, it’s just that there was something about the team dynamic and the situation. I couldn’t see where to take it that would be fun and original.
If you’ve not got the right story idea then there’s no point in doing it for the sake of doing it …
No, that’s right, particularly when the work I’m being offered at Marvel is so cool.
You have a new book in the works …
Yes, I’m going to … spinning out of Messiah CompleX I’m going to be doing a very different kind of book, a solo book or sorts, a solo book with a very large supporting cast.
This is the X-Men Legacy book?
X-Men Legacy, yes. We’re taking a character who’s been in the X-Men universe pretty much since day one and has a really, really fundamental place in X-Men lore.
Can I take a guess at who it is?
You can, but [laughter] I’m not going to tell you if you’re right or not
Professor X
Could be. [both laugh]
It’s a lovely idea for a book and we’re going to do some very cool things with it. One of the things that I’m happiest about is that it allows me to take forward some of the beats that I was setting up in Adjectiveless X-Men. So that’s in the pipeline.
What can you tell us about the cast for X-Men Legacy?
That's a hard question to answer, because arguably if I'm doing it right pretty much everyone in X-Men continuity is going to come in at one point or another. But I'm planning to bring two female characters - one old, one new - in for some pretty profound and revelatory beats. And there's a triumvirate of X-Men villains who play a crucial part at different times: the grand old men, in some ways.
The new female character - is that a brand new character of your own creation or someone who's just fairly new in comics terms, and fairly new to the X-Men?
The latter. Someone recently introduced who I find very compelling, and whose backstory has never really been more than hinted at.
Will any of the the villainous triumverate appear as allies of the lead character?
At certain points in the story they're part of a shared project, as you might say - not allies, but travellers on the same road.
Given the specifics of the cast and your options for weaving in additional characters - is it fair to say that this is the X-book you've always wanted to write? How much latitude do you have in the direction and cast of this book?
This is... a unique proposition, in a lot of ways. Very exciting, and very unlike the other books in the line. I'm having a lot of fun with it, and I'm being given a lot of creative freedom. The constraints come in a different way, from the actual core concept of the book. This is material that has to be handled very carefully. But if I can pull it off it will be tremendous.
With your work on X-Men Legacy … does that mean you’ll be coming off Adjectiveless or that Adjectiveless is stopping altogether?
I’m not sure exactly what’s still to be announced but it’s fair to say that there’s going to be a fundamental shake up of the line that will leave all of the books redefined. Some books will stop, some books will launch. My involvement with the whole X-Men franchise is going to be fundamentally changed. I’m still going to be there – I love the characters, I love the books, I love playing in this sandbox.
When you look at the team you started with on Adjectiveless, that team is completely destroyed now. Was that your plan from the start?
No, not exactly. It kind of became inevitable as we firmed up our plans for Messiah CompleX and particularly as we thought about how events in Adjectiveless would set up Sinister’s agenda for Messiah CompleX it became obvious that most of my team could no longer be on the playing field for the event and for the aftermath of the event. It would have been possible to spare them some of the carnage but I think it’s actually very dramatic, the way it did play out. I don’t think anybody saw it coming, some of the beats are less surprising than others, but when you put them all together they’re pretty shocking.
There’s a scene in #204 where Iceman says to Cyclops ‘You’re going to disband us, aren’t you? You’re going to bench Rogue’s team.’ And he says ‘What team? It’s you.’ He enumerates what’s happened to all the others, one by one, and of course he’s right.
How do you think that will affect Bobby and Sam’s relationship with Rogue? She’s the one who chose to bring these people on to the team, to bring them into the family.
I think their loyalty to her remains unaffected. That scene I was just describing is actually Bobby passionately defending Rogue. You have Cyclops there saying … a lot of her choices didn’t pan out … and perhaps that was wrong, perhaps my faith in her was misplaced. Bobby very eloquently tells Cyclops why Rogue was a great team leader and why the blame for what’s happened has to fall elsewhere. I think it’s a very powerful scene. I’m definitely on Bobby’s side, I’m using Scott as devil’s advocate there.
I always intended Sam, Bobby and Rogue to be the stable core of a very unstable team and the dynamic between the three of them – the way they can just rely on each other without needing to say anything, without having to give specific orders – I wanted that to come out strongly in the story.
Given the way you’ve put Rogue through the wringer – probably more than anyone else during your run – until she’s barely functioning, barely in control … do you plan to continue with Rogue from here or is she left like that for someone else?
Oh no, she’s not left like that. Everything, every single Rogue beat was planned in advance, we knew where we wanted to take her and where we wanted to leave her and the story’s emphatically not over yet.
Was it your idea to bring the Marauders back as a threat or did editorial ask you to?
It was an inevitable corollary of bringing Sinister back. We’ve been planning Messiah CompleX for a year and a half, ever since I came … two years now … ever since I came onboard X-Men as a writer. In January 2006 they flew me over to New York and we were brainstorming then what would we like to do with the crossover, where would we like to take it and who ought to be involved and I think the conversation that clinched it was … we were walking towards the function suite where we were having these discussions and CB Cebulski said to me ‘given what we’re saying about the trigger for Messiah CompleX, the bad guy has to be Sinister. It makes so much sense for it to be Sinister’. And once you’ve got Sinister how can you resist bringing the Marauders in?
The fact that Exodus and his Acolytes are in the mix too – and they are an eclectic mix, they’re not all ex-Acolytes, they’re people culled from other mutant teams … that was just because I wanted to do something really cool and maybe unexpected for the annual last year. I pitched that idea, let us bring Exodus in as well, and then if you have Exodus and Sinister fighting side by side you have a force that really is pretty much unstoppable.
It’s hard to think of any other amalgamated force that’s as dangerous and as driven as the X-Men have ever had to face, such combined forces – which is good given we’ve got so many X-teams now, it needs something of that size to give them a serious threat.
Yes, you’re right, absolutely.
Did you think about adding to the Marauders cast, of adding someone to it, or was it the case that there are enough already?
I think … no, I don’t think it was ever seriously discussed, adding or subtracting. Sabretooth was taken away but Sabretooth was taken away because of decisions being made elsewhere in the line. We wanted to get the vibe of Mutant Massacre. I remember reading Mutant Massacre … I was going to say as a kid, I wasn’t a kid, I was already well into my teens but … that story, the sense that nothing’s safe, they come in like thunder, out of nowhere, and they’re killing people from the get-go, and every time you think you know who they are it turns out there are more of them, they keep on introducing more characters, and they just get more and more formidable as a force and it was really scary and really edgy. We wanted to get that same vibe and we felt it was appropriate to get the same cast, as far as possible. So I started that arc with Riptide walking into an elevator and using his power and basically just killing a whole bunch of people who he hasn’t got anything against because of one target, Quiet Bill, in the elevator too. We felt that served the same function as those opening scenes … those unforgettable opening scenes … of Mutant Massacre.
So other than Sabretooth, who’s off the team for other reasons, we’ve got Karima, Lady Mastermind, Mystique … and Karima forced against the team. Do we see any possibility of any of those coming back to the side of the X-Men in the immediate future?
I don’t want to say anything that would … I don’t want to drop any hints about that … I will say that the various defections are all very differently motivated and that we don’t yet know the whole story.
We already have a hint of a mixed agenda for Mystique with her letting Iceman go.
Yeah, I’ve had a lot of questions about that. I think people have mixed feelings about it. My take on it – and I’m not sure whether this is ever going to be explicitly stated in the book – is that she genuinely … she identified Iceman as the biggest threat in that team. She realized that if he was allowed to use his powers in his ice form then he was the one who could conceivably bring everything down before it got going, so she cold-bloodedly and cynically seduced him in order to take him off the table. But somewhere in that process a connection was made. She can’t quite bring herself to shoot him in cold blood. It may be anomalous for her but I’d like to think that we made it work, even if on a later occasion she does kill him. I think her hesitation at that point makes psychological sense.
I think the kind of intimacy they’ve shared … even though it’s done from a callous viewpoint … it’s still intimacy and it’s very hard to switch yourself off from that.
I think Iceman’s not stupid, he knows how big a threat she is and he knows how tricky a customer she is. I think in order to get him to lower his guard she has to lower hers to a certain extent. I think she has to go in further than she intended to at the outset.
With all the talk about precogs, Destiny’s diaries etc. – and even a mention of Irene in Endangered Species – I have to ask if this is building up to anything with Destiny?
In a sense it is, yes. Certainly the Destiny’s Diaries – even though they’ve been destroyed now – continue to be a story element in the Messiah CompleX. There’s more going on there. In a much less direct way I’m also setting something up which I hope to play out in this solo book which relates to the mystery of the Destiny/Mystique relationship, which I think is a really, really cool relationship. I love the joints of that relationship, even the ambiguity of how far it was a romantic sexual attachment. I think it’s fitting because we know so little of what makes Mystique tick We know it was the most intense relationship of her life but we’ll never see it from the inside.
So there are no plans to resurrect Destiny?
No [emphatically], no, there aren’t.
Adjectiveless has jumped between the two artists, Humberto Ramos and Chris Bachalo. How do think that’s worked out and what was the reason for using two artists?
We … this is a model that’s almost becoming the industry standard. I think it’s because if you look at an artist like Chris you can see that doing a page a day is not always going to be a viable game plan for him because his work is so fully rendered, so beautifully detailed, so finely drawn that you’re inevitably going to have – in the long-term – deadline problems and so you need a pinch-hitter. It sounds insulting to Humberto to describe him in those terms but you need somebody else to come in to give Chris a dispellment so that he can take all the time he needs on his issues. And then Humberto comes in with a very different artistic style and one that I think is equally powerful and equally suited, in a different way, to the material we’re dealing with. It’s kind of like … it’s something I learned when I was doing Lucifer, that it’s easier to go from A to Z than it is to go from A to B. If you have two art styles that are very, very similar it jars more. We have Peter Gross and Dean Ormston, Peter Gross for the long arcs, Dean Ormston for the one-offs in between times and it was a superb model because it almost became a form of punctuation - a visible diastole and systole in the life of the book.
Congratulations on Endangered Species - how satisfying a project was that to be involved with? How enthusiastic were Marvel to have Beast headline so important a story?
Thanks! It was very rewarding to do because it was such a different structural model. The one-off is like an overture, and then we have a suite of reflections or moments that take us to a lot of different places, a lot of different aspects of X-Men continuity. It's interesting to read the reviews, because where they're negative they're negative because of the repetitions. Beast tries A and it doesn't work, then he tries B and it doesn't work. But that tragi-comic striving and failing is the central plank of the story, and against it we've got - I think - a real crisis and a real character arc for him. So the ending, although it can't in the nature of things be a surprise, ought to be both convincing and moving. If Messiah Complex is the grand epic, Endangered Species is the lyric counterpoint. Marvel were very satisfied with that concept, and with Beast being the rationalist Everyman who acts as our guide.
Partnering up Beast and Dark Beast made for some satisfying contrasts. They really are wonderful foils for each other. Is it a relationship you enjoyed writing, and one you plan to return to?
It was a wonderful tool for this particular story, because it dramatises the moral choices facing Hank as nothing else could. But yeah, it was also just all kinds of fun on a dramatic level. I'd like to pair them up again, and I'd like Doc to become a force to be reckoned with in the X-verse.
Was that meant to be Cecilia Reyes we saw dying in the Neverland chapter? Did you ever consider using Endangered Species to bring her back?
I always liked her as a character, but I don't think that affection is universally shared. And unfortunately her power is a variation on a very well-worn theme, so when I suggested a context for bringing her back, nobody ever took me up on it.
