Post by brentlambert on Mar 14, 2012 9:27:53 GMT -5
SCOTT REDMOND INTERVIEW
Marvel Anthology: What appeals to you most about Marvel Anthology as a site?
Scott Redmond: The most appealing thing to me about Marvel Anthology is the community. There is a real sense of us all being in this together in the different imprints and over all, instead of us all just being writers turning in our own stuff and maybe reading others and just going about our way. I love that in the X-Imprint and the others as they do it too, we have big email conversations about everything and anything and we’re on the same board when it comes to the direction of the line. We have stuff planned out for years which is fantastic. It makes it feel more like as if you were really writing this stuff at Marvel, planning ahead to know where you’re going and not just a bunch of writers all separately flying by the seat of their pants.
MA: Top three favorite titles at the site. Put them out there. Why do you like them?
Scott: Top three favorites, hmm gotta think a second here. Fan of a great many books, but I think I got three in mind.
West Coast Avengers: While I love the Avengers book as well, there is just something that speaks to me here with the grouping of characters. They’re not fully a group you’d think of together doing the things they do and it really works with the way they play off each other. And I gotta love a book with US Agent and Hercules in it for sure.
X-Factor: The thing I love about X-Factor is that at first glance at the premise a person would think it wouldn’t work or would be boring and that Marvel would never do such a book. That’s the pure beauty of it, Marvel would never do it and they’re foolish not to. The mixture of action alongside political intrigue is very well done and books like this are the very reason most of us do fan fiction, to be different than the source material.
Starjammers: Another book that Marvel will never do outside of the couple of minis they did for the team years and years ago. Exploring the cosmic side of Marvel is something that has spoken to me for years, seeing the vast cosmos and not just focusing all on Earth. Starjammers is a rocking adventure through space and it’s pretty damn good at it too.
MA: Who's your favorite writer at the site?
Scott: Oh man putting me on the spot there. Hmm, favorite writer on site…and no offense to anyone else cause I like a lot of writers on site. If I had to pick one I’d probably pick Gavin McMahon. The depth and description in Gavin’s work has never stopped ceasing to amaze in all the years that I’ve known him.
MA: What do you like the most about what you get to write at Marvel Anthology?
Scott: I love writing what I write because of the vast directions I can take. With Astonishing X-Men I get to turn a team of X-Men into the mutant equivalent of the Avengers and take them on big giant adventures while still dealing with the down to Earth character moments and the growing amount of celebrity around the X-Men. I also get to be part of a group of stellar writers and help plot the very future of the X-Line. Also I get to have Jean Grey as leader of the X-Men, don’t get much better than that.
With Force Works I get to delve into an area of the Avengers line not often portrayed at Marvel, a group of heroes dealing with problems before they get big enough to warrant the attention of the Avengers as well as dealing with the small things that might go unnoticed by the bigger heroes. It’s like Leverage meets the Avengers with a bit of James Bond style spy work thrown in the mix.
MA: Your dream title. What would it be? And if you're already on it, then what would be your dream title you'd like to see someone else write?
Scott: The two titles that I’d love a crack at as my dream projects are Fantastic Four or Amazing Spider-Man. I’ve always wanted to tackle some stories with the four and deal with the family aspect of the book as well as the giant sprawling science fiction stories that you just can’t do with many other characters. With Spider-Man, he’s always been my favorite and the character I connected to the most and I would love to pen a Spider-Man book. Hell I’d even pen a Scarlet Spider or such book, because it would just be cool to deal with the Spider in some way.
MA: Who's your favorite character at the site to read about?
Scott: Favorite character…hmm. Right now I’d say Mockingbird as I’m really interested in the changes that have come to her through her journey from believed death to active duty for SHIELD. I think Jeff is handling it wonderfully.
MA: Who's your favorite character under your pen?
Scott: Easily the favorite character under my pen has become Iceman. That really shocked me as I’m a fan of Iceman but for the first year of writing Astonishing I had nothing to really say with either Iceman or Sunfire but with the recent changes to the titles and re-shuffling and moving forward I’ve jumped forward with both characters but Iceman definitely is a joy to write.
MA: Which character do you most look forward to writing?
Scott: Hawkeye, hands down. I’m ready to jump in more with the Avenging Archer and delve into what makes him tick and why he is choosing to lead a team like Force Works and where it’s all taking him.
MA: So what are all of the titles you write at Marvel Anthology and how do you feel that they fit into the wider Anthology universe?
Scott: Right now the only titles on my plate when it comes to Marvel Anthology are Astonishing X-Men and Force Works, with an upcoming Dazzler miniseries tied into Astonishing. Astonishing X-Men fits into the universe as one of the myriad of X-Men titles and tackles the aspect of what the new celebrity status of mutants is doing to the X-Men and how they embrace it. It’s the big ‘Avengers’ style book as I mentioned before, where the X-Men go out and get to be the heroes in a big way.
Force Works fits into the Avengers line giving a different take on how heroes can react to what goes on around them and make a difference. They tackle the things that might escape the gaze of the bigger teams.
Dazzler is just a fun miniseries with Dazzler embracing her music roots and ties into some big events that happened in the x-books recently so its place in the wider universe of the site is to build more of the celebrity universe that the X-Men now inhabit. Show it from another side and Dazzler is the perfect guide for that.
MA: What do you feel is your greatest strength as a writer? And/or weakness?
Scott: My greatest strength, hmm. I think that would be in the department of plotting and building the infrastructure of my titles and other events around them. I’m an ideas man most of the time, my brain never stops thinking of a billion new ideas for stories and novels and just about anything in my life. My biggest weakness as a writer is description. I often forget about descriptions and can write whole titles without ever once telling what the people are the world around them looks like.
MA: Which writers do you draw influence from and why?
Scott: Right now I’m heavily influenced by Jason Aaron, Mike Carey, and Rick Remender. The style they use to tell stories and the way they can weave continuity from all areas of the past together with present storylines and not bog things down speaks to me and I look to do things in a similar way.
Outside of comics most books I read influence me in a way, because I try to learn from what they do right and wrong and learn from it and apply it to my own writing as I know I still have a long way to go in some regards.
MA: So I saw you mentioned Jean Grey as the leader of Astonishing X-Men. Why do you feel she's a good X-Man leader and what does she bring to the table that someone like Cyclops or Storm doesn't?
Scott: Compassion. Number one thing Jean brings to the table is her compassionate soul. Not that Cyclops or Storm don’t have that, with Jean though it guides her much more I would say. Cyclops is more tactical minded when it comes to things, and Storm has her own way of leading that can be compassionate but also hard when needed. Not that Jean won’t or can’t be hard when needed, but she looks at all of her team as more than just assets. They are people and she knows how to deal with people and smooth things over. She sees more into them than they might or than other leaders might.
An example is from recent issues where she speaks to Bobby about seeing a leader in him, as he’s been someone that has been there from the start with Xavier as one of the original class yet most only see him as the joker and let him keep that up or just use him for his powers. Jean see’s what Bobby is capable of and wants to cultivate that.
I think with Jean also is that she knows what great powers can do to a person with concerns to the Phoenix entity and what happened to it when it tried to pose as her and her own struggles with her powers. So she knows that more has to be honed than just the skills and fighting of those around her. They need to be mentally and psychologically strong and feel that they can all count on one another. Like a family.
MA: In the next year or two, which character or characters do you think are going to change the most heavily under your pen?
Scott: Off the top of my head I’d have to say Bolt, Iceman, Bishop, Timeslip, and Jean are up there for big time changes. Not sweeping changes for the sake of changes but they all have some huge character moments coming up. Bishop in particular is going to have his entire world shattered and built back up building off what has come before in both Marvel and with the set-up for him at the site. They’re all going to come out stronger, and I hope better, for it in the end.
MA: So give us a bit of insight into the antagonists that the heroes under your pen are about to face. Which ones in the next year or so do you believe are going to be the most threatening?
Scott: The next thing the Astonishing X-Men will be facing is the Friends of Humanity and some old school Sentinels, so that’s always fun. What I’m really excited for is the team taking on the Wrecking Crew. The Wrecking Crew is like the mark of villain that most teams take on at some point that seems to mark you as genuine or something. Though it won’t be anything like what normally happens when a team takes them. What I’m really waiting for is the team to meet Khan, and the big things I have for him. That will be epic I hope.
For Force Works they’ll be taking on a variety of foes of mostly lower status as well as sects of Hydra and AIM. I have a obscurely used villain I’m gonna dust off that I don’t want to spoil just yet but it will be really fun to put them in place where I plan too.
MA: Power wise, who do you feel are some of the most lethal characters at your disposal whether they protagonist or antagonist?
Scott: While many would assume I’d say someone like Jean, protagonist wise I’d choose Iceman and Sunfire. They control some primal elements and what they could do with them is so much more than the usual they are shown to use. Iceman is a character that writers like Carey and Aaron are just beginning to scrape the surface of the amazing things he can do.
Antagonist wise I’d say Factor Three. For a totally different type of power. The power of the three individuals, Baroness, Shinobi Shaw, and John Sublime is nothing really spectacular to write about. They’re not really threats in that way. The power they hold economic and political wise though is nothing to bat an eye at though. They have the sort of wealth and power to buy something like the X-Men and literally bury them ten times over. They're threat because they are not just a threat you can punch a few times and be over with.
For Force Works you have Hydra fitting the same way that Factor Three does, and on the hero side I think that Cloak and Dagger are quite powerful and don’t get the props they deserve by far and I plan to rectify that cause there is a lot of raw potential power wise there to make them a really big threat.
MA: I saw you mention Astonishing X-Men as kind of the Avengers of the X-Teams. Was it intimidating stepping into that title knowing that was what you were being expected to write? And how do you intend to put them on that level?
Scott: Oh it was very intimidating. I sought out inquiring about the title when it was left by Dino Pollard because I’ve always wanted to write an X-Book outside my House of Ideas site history. Once it was all laid out for me though it was really intimidating to say the least. Knowing that people were expecting me to pull out some big stories the warrant them being seen this way. It’s not something I’ve really achieved just yet but for sure I plan to do just that this coming up year. I plan to put the X-Men up against threats that are more than just their usual bad guys over again. They’ll be taking on planetary level threats. Cosmic level threats. Universal threats like Khan. Hell I’m throwing them at one point against Ego the Living Planet, that’s some big stuff there.
MA: You were a part of the Weapon X crossover in the X-Line? Did you have fun writing that and what were some of the highlights of that crossover for you, reading or writing wise?
Scott: I loved writing Weapon X and being part of that crossover. It was so much fun coordinating with my fellow writers and seeing it all gel together was even better. It was seeing all that hard work and effort come together and be successful and that felt really good.
Writing wise the highlight was the death of Firestar. Not for a perverse liking death reason or anything, but because it had such an impact on things and the new direction and it still has ripples. I’m sending Justice on an incredible journey that will not leave him the same at all. I have some big crazy plans and they all come from that moment. Reading wise I just loved seeing how each person handled the attacks and the aftermath of them, seeing it planned out was one thing but watching the stellar way others put those plans to paper was great.
MA: Here's your chance to sell Force Works as it’s a relatively new title. Explain to us why we should check it out.
Scott: You should check out Force Works if you love Hawkeye…that’s probably not enough. All right if you love spy movies and stories or shows like Leverage or just seeing heroes taking on threats that aren’t Ultron or Magneto or the Masters of Evil or anything huge, this is the place. Heroes being heroes even down to stopping bank robberies if need be. Putting out the fires before they become infernos. That is Force Works in a nutshell.
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