Nrama: What sorts of villainy will Franken-Castle be up against in this story arc?
Remender: We have an entirely new villain and hes tied into a very awesome part of Marvels tradition that I dont want to reveal just yet but this villain is a monster-killing machine. Basically, hes after something one of the monsters has. His family was slaughtered by a pack of werewolves in 1914 forcing him to kill his family and his village before they transformed into monsters...I dont want to go too far into the origin stuffpeople will have to check it out for themselves.
Nrama: What sorts of fun did you and your cohort Tony Moore have when you were laying out these issues? Did the two of you approach this project any differently than projects youve worked on together in the past?
Remender: You know, the great thing about working with a buddy like Tony is the amount of time weve spent together that makes our work come together so effortlessly. We know that if it excites usand we both get really full of bubbling nerd enthusiasmthat were on the right path and no matter how frightening it might be in terms of Are they going to like this? we know what we think is a good comic book and imaginative effortwhile staying true to the integrity of Frank Castle. Its of the utmost importance that he stays Frank Castle.
Franken-Castle is one of those ideas that we knew as we were bouncing ideas back and forth and getting excited about them; we just knew this idea was going to be great. This is easily Tonys best work ever. Hes just astounding.
To answer your question, no, we didnt really do anything differently. We have a really nice collaborative process together that weve developed by working together over the past five years nowand weve been friends for ten years now. Its really nice to work with a friend on something of this caliber and to have Marvel getting behind it the way that they are. This is a project that Punisher fans have not seen before. Were really excited.
The fun thing about the Marvel Universe is that everyone knows that a good character like the Punisher isnt going to stay dead forever and ever and ever. In most cases, the character is taken off the board for a while and then readers see how the character fights its way back to prominence. Thats the fun of this sort of story; this type of story is one of key reasons why Marvel Comicsand comic books in generalare fun. As far as full-blown imagination and fantasy goes, thats what weve got going on for Punisher for the next couple of years; its Frank Castle still being the guy he is. I mean, in issue #10, he put a gun to the back of Firebrands head and forced him to torch Castles family instead of having them resurrected by these evil means...thats Frank Castle. Were going to be putting Frank into situations that will actually open up possibilities for potentially bigger stories like these. There is a new kind of slaughter-fest on the horizon for Frank, thats the best way I can put it for now.
Nrama: How did you come up with this idea of merging the Punisher with an iconic character like Frankenstein?
Remender: It goes back to something Jason Aaron, Matt Fraction, Tony Moore, and I had been batting aroundpitching a Ghost Rider/Wolverine/Punisher seriesand, as we were putting together ideas, I had come up with this idea of a Monster Metropolis underneath New York. Marvel has all these great monsters and theyre all scattered all over the place; why not have them all living in one central place, giving them this central mission? We had discussed the possibility of making Frank into the Spirit of Vengeance and tying him into all the cool stuff Jason is doing over in Ghost Rider. As we were developing stuff, Tony drew this picture of Frank in this sort of gangly, destroyed half-robot body and we started talking Frankensteins involvement. Over time, that project was sort of shelved and we all got a little too busy to do it.
