MichaelDoran
11-07-2002, 01:07 PM
<a href="http://classic.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/METALLIX1.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://classic.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/METALLIX1_t.jpg" width="175" height="258" border="0" alt="Metallix #1, page 1" align="right"></a>One suit of armor, four wearers. Talk about a time-share. The concept is the root of Future Comics’ second ongoing series, Metallix, debuting later this month. Written by David Micheline with art by Ron Lim and an original concept by Micheline and Bob Layton, as with the publisher’s initial ongoing, Freemind, the new series again blends super-heroic action adventure with high technology. The only catch this time – there are four people that have to share one suit of armor.
A quick thumbnail of the series – Dr. Max Krome was employed by Owen Parrish to create an intelligent metal, dubbed ‘Metal X.’ Thing is, Krome and Parrish didn’t see eye to eye. Long story short, Krome was booted, and Parrish created a suit of armor constructed out of Metal X, and plans on using it, along with a team of four specialists, who will wear the armor interchangeably, to solve problems – for a price.
For more, we tracked down Micheline for some insight on the armor and the key players.
Newsarama: In broad strokes, let’s see if this is right: Metal X is a smart metal that Max Krome was using – quietly - to create weapons along with the armor, and when his sponsor found out about it, he was booted?
David Micheline: Pretty much. What we’ve basically done is taken a cliché and twisted it. The familiar situation is: Good Scientist Makes Dangerous Discovery, Has It Stolen By Powerful Corporation For Evil Purposes. But what we have is: Bad Scientist Makes Dangerous Discovery, Has It Stolen By Powerful Corporation To Prevent It Being Used For Evil Purposes. Max Krome invented Metal X on company time, and as a result they retain legal ownership. Max feels he was robbed, literally, and when you remove the moral issue from the equation, he’s got a pretty good point.
NRAMA: So, did Krome’s boss, Owen Parrish always envision Metal X to be used for humanitarian means, or did he have his own agenda as well?
<a href="http://classic.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/METALLIX2.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://classic.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/METALLIX2_t.jpg" width="165" height="241" border="0" alt="Metallix #1, page 2" align="left"></a>DM: Owen Parrish never envisioned Metal X as a cure for humanity’s problems. He’s a businessman, and his central goal is to help his business prosper. Metal X is a key to that goal. But because Parrish is a decent human being at his core, the uses to which he puts Metal X, in pursuit of corporate success, tend to benefit humanity rather than harm it.
NRAMA: Can you go into a little bit more about how the suit enhances the abilities of the wearer? The nanotech instantly reads and adapts to what the wearer is trying to do, and adds its own "oomph" to it - are we just talking about enhanced strength/speed/stamina here, or more, say, intelligence, will, etc?
DM: The hows and whys of the nano-armor’s functions are still trying to be understood by both the developers and the wearers. The smart metal does seem to somehow sense what the wearer is trying to do, and directs its enhancing effects towards that goal. In other words, if the wearer is trying to lift something heavy, the armor will focus its efforts to increase strength, to make the wearer’s task easier. This is probably due to the as-yet-unidentified catalyst Max Krome used to create Metal X. As far as anyone knows, the metal doesn’t have intelligence of its own.
NRAMA: You and Bob have a solid history with armored characters. Rather than create another iteration of Iron Man or X-O, what did the two of you pull from to make this armor character different?
<a href="http://classic.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/METALLIX3.jpg"><img src="http://classic.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/METALLIX3_t.jpg" border="0" width="165" height="241" alt="Metallix #1, page 3" align="right"></a>DM: Bob used his reading on nano-technology and smart metals to develop the initial idea of a programmable suit of high-tech armor. For the fictional side of the concept, I’d peg the old Challengers of the Unknown comic book as an influence. We both liked the idea of a group of non-powered adventurers exploring the unknown, risking their lives for the thrill of it and for the knowledge they might discover. Adding programmable armor gives that basic premise a widened dimension and more possibilities.
NRAMA: But with this armor, rather than a single wearer, you’ve got a team exchanging the suit. Run ‘em down…
DM: Gil Sanderson is the team’s leader. An ex-army officer and Gulf War veteran, Gil is the only one of the group with actual combat experience. He’s serious, and can be considered something of a tight-ass by his team, but he cares about them more than they imagine, and would give his life for them without hesitation.
Blue Hill an expert diver, both scuba and mixed-gas deep diving. Her field of expertise is marine science, with degrees in both biology and archeology. Her natural senses (hearing, vision, etc.) are sharper than average; when enhanced by the Metal X armor, they become extraordinary.
Aidan O’Connor is a pilot and wannabe astronaut. He’s the team’s expert on everything involving aeronautics or outer space, and can fly anything with wings or props. Though he spent some time in the R.A.F., and is a tournament level martial artist, he’s never experienced actual combat. Until he joins Metallix.
Seth Wong is quiet and intense. He doesn’t make friends easily, but when he does accept you his loyalty is unswerving. He’s a geologist with a particular interest in volcanology. An Olympic-level gymnast, his reflexes and ability to judge spatial relationships become uncanny when enhanced by the Metal X armor. He refuses to kill, even in self-defense, which doesn’t endear him to Gil.
NRAMA: With that kind of team assembled, who would call upon them?
DM: Although there’s the possibility of governmental participation and international/political involvement in the future, for now Team Metallix is a group of corporate problem-solvers. Their employer, Redstone Research, hires them out as field agents to resolve dangerous or puzzling situations that don’t seem approachable by standard means. In our first story, they’ve been sent to a Central American country to discover how crude being pumped from a new oil field is becoming contaminated, putting the nation’s economy at risk. In our second story arc, communications from an Antarctic research station have mysteriously ceased, and the team is sent in to find out why. With the Metal X armor they can go anywhere, so assignments at the bottom of the sea, in the Sahara Desert, even in outer space are possible.
NRAMA: That said, you’ve got one suit of armor and four potential wearers. What's the group dynamic, both literal and figurative?
<a href="http://classic.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/METALLIX4.jpg"><img src="http://classic.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/METALLIX4_t.gif" border="0" width="165" height="241" alt="Metallix #1, page 4" align="left"></a>DM: The armor is worn by the team member whose particular enhanced skills are best suited to a given situation. If circumstances change during any phase of a mission, the armor can be shifted to a different team member by physical contact. Gil tends to keep the armor himself, feeling an almost obsessive sense of responsibility for his crew, due to an incident in his past that will be delved into around issue #5, and sometimes has to be talked into transferring it to someone else.
NRAMA: What would Gil want the suit as his own? What can the suit do, in addition to augmenting the wearer's natural abilities?
DM: A: It can pretty much do whatever is programmed into it, governed only by the laws of physics and the programmer’s imagination. For instance, though wearers can “leap small buildings at a single bound” due to a propelling burst of reverse magnetism, they can’t actually fly. But in our first arc, a scientist at Redstone develops a program to generate thin membranes from the wearer’s arms, acting essentially as parachute-like wings, giving them extended gliding ability. They still can’t fly, but this gives them far greater range and maneuverability. New abilities can be programmed into the armor as new challenges arise.
NRAMA: By mentioning the Superman catchphrase though, you do open the similar doorway - as powerful as the suit is, what could possibly be a threat to it/the wearer?
DM: The armor, as it is now, can impede and dampen attack by physical objects; that is, bullets, blades, and pressures such as the concussive effects of an explosion. But as we see in issue #2, such things as coherent light – lasers - can still get through. Also, unless the wearer specifically forms the armor’s “mask” into a full-coverage helmet, the wearer could be vulnerable to gas or biotoxic attack. Also, the effects of electricity and various forms of radiation are unknown.
NRAMA: So what hope does Max Krome have of stopping it in order to steal it?
DM: All he needs is himself. In a failed experiment to duplicate Metal X, Max’s body becomes fused with a new substance - call it “Metal Y” for simplicity’s sake - that shares the basic molecular structure of Metal X. As a result, his physical form, molded into blades, clubs or other such weapons, can get through Metal X. But fair is fair, and we find in issue #2 that Metal X can also damage Krome in his “metallicized” state.
NRAMA: Are there others, besides Krome who want to get their hands on the suit? After all, it doesn’t seem that the military would be too thrilled with there being only one of these suits out there, and they don't have it…
<a href="http://classic.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/METALLIX5.jpg"><img src="http://classic.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/METALLIX5_t.jpg" border="0" width="165" height="241" alt="Metallix #1, page 5" align="right"></a>DM: After being booted out of Redstone Research, Max Krome turns to another C.E.O., Arthur Rathrock, for help. Rathrock is about as slimy as a human being can get, so has naturally become a huge success in Big Business. For now, Artie is happy to support Krome because Krome’s activities screw up other companies; i.e., the competition. But if Krome were to actually gain possession of Metal X, well, let’s just say that Rathrock’s main loyalty is to himself.
Of course, the government and the military wouldn’t mind having the secrets of Metal X themselves. And there are a couple of characters from our other series, Ang Mann in Freemind, and Adonis DuLac in Deathmask who could probably find uses for the Metallix armor. Time will tell.
NRAMA: Any other details, other than what you’ve already said, that you’d care to share about your first story arc?
DM: There’s a beginning-middle-end story that runs through issues #1 and #2, and another than runs through issues #3 and #4. But all of those form the background for an overall story that concludes in issue #5 with events that impact the group and the series permanently.
We’re also doing a little something different, format-wise, with Metallix. Instead of having one 28-page story, our first four issues feature a 22-page lead story and a 6-page back-up. This means more work for us, but we think it’s worth it in this case because we’re actually telling the origin of the Metallix team through the back-up stories. So while an ongoing adventure is taking place in the lead story, the reader is being brought up to speed on how everything came about via the back-up. With issue #5 we’re back to 28-page single stories.
NRAMA: Given that you and Bob are closely associated with Metallix, Iron Man
comparisons are naturally going to be made. So how does Metallix compare and contrast to Iron Man, Tony, and the rest of the mythos?
DM: The background of the Metallix series is cutting edge technology, and action involves a suit of metallic armor. And that’s about it for the similarities. In Iron Man there’s one guy who runs everything: Tony Stark. He’s the boss, the inventor, the guy in the suit. With Metallix, the suit was actually invented by our arch villain, is worn by four different people, and those wearers are employees. Plus, none of the people wearing the suit really knows how it works. They can’t just “McGuyver” repairs or alterations in the field. The main operative difference, however, is that the personalities of the four Metallix team members are widely different from that of Tony Stark.
NRAMA: Backing up from there, who created the concept of Metallix?
<a href="http://classic.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/METALLIX6.jpg"><img src="http://classic.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/METALLIX6_t.jpg" border="0" width="165" height="241" alt="Metallix #1, page 6" align="right"></a>DM: Bob came up with the name, and the idea of a programmable suit of smart metal armor, when we were working on an Iron Man project for Marvel. That assignment went away, but we still had the name and the concept, so we decided to use it for a series at Future. In an effort to move the concept farther away from Iron Man, I suggested that it be a team book, since “Metallix” can be viewed as plural as well as singular. I then came up with the idea of having only one suit of armor that is switched between each of the team members, to try to make the book different from all of the team books already out there.
NRAMA: Did Bob come up with the suit design as well?
DM: Yes - Bob designed the original Metallix armor on his own. [Series artist] Ron Lim may be adding tweaks here and there as the series progresses.
NRAMA: Wrapping up, give the larger picture - what's the big theme of Metallix, the heart of the book?
DM: I don’t know, at least consciously, and I don’t really want to think about it too much. I feel in my gut that I have a solid handle on what the book is all about, but if I try to bring that to the surface and analyze it, I’m afraid I’ll end up being too self-conscious about it as I plot/write the book. I’d rather let the Big Picture paint itself, stroke by stroke, so I can be entertained and surprised along with the readers.
Like Future Comics’ other releases, Metallix will be sold directly to consumers and retailers at the company’s website, <a href="http://www.futurecomiconline.com" target="_blank">www.futurecomiconline.com</a>
A quick thumbnail of the series – Dr. Max Krome was employed by Owen Parrish to create an intelligent metal, dubbed ‘Metal X.’ Thing is, Krome and Parrish didn’t see eye to eye. Long story short, Krome was booted, and Parrish created a suit of armor constructed out of Metal X, and plans on using it, along with a team of four specialists, who will wear the armor interchangeably, to solve problems – for a price.
For more, we tracked down Micheline for some insight on the armor and the key players.
Newsarama: In broad strokes, let’s see if this is right: Metal X is a smart metal that Max Krome was using – quietly - to create weapons along with the armor, and when his sponsor found out about it, he was booted?
David Micheline: Pretty much. What we’ve basically done is taken a cliché and twisted it. The familiar situation is: Good Scientist Makes Dangerous Discovery, Has It Stolen By Powerful Corporation For Evil Purposes. But what we have is: Bad Scientist Makes Dangerous Discovery, Has It Stolen By Powerful Corporation To Prevent It Being Used For Evil Purposes. Max Krome invented Metal X on company time, and as a result they retain legal ownership. Max feels he was robbed, literally, and when you remove the moral issue from the equation, he’s got a pretty good point.
NRAMA: So, did Krome’s boss, Owen Parrish always envision Metal X to be used for humanitarian means, or did he have his own agenda as well?
<a href="http://classic.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/METALLIX2.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://classic.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/METALLIX2_t.jpg" width="165" height="241" border="0" alt="Metallix #1, page 2" align="left"></a>DM: Owen Parrish never envisioned Metal X as a cure for humanity’s problems. He’s a businessman, and his central goal is to help his business prosper. Metal X is a key to that goal. But because Parrish is a decent human being at his core, the uses to which he puts Metal X, in pursuit of corporate success, tend to benefit humanity rather than harm it.
NRAMA: Can you go into a little bit more about how the suit enhances the abilities of the wearer? The nanotech instantly reads and adapts to what the wearer is trying to do, and adds its own "oomph" to it - are we just talking about enhanced strength/speed/stamina here, or more, say, intelligence, will, etc?
DM: The hows and whys of the nano-armor’s functions are still trying to be understood by both the developers and the wearers. The smart metal does seem to somehow sense what the wearer is trying to do, and directs its enhancing effects towards that goal. In other words, if the wearer is trying to lift something heavy, the armor will focus its efforts to increase strength, to make the wearer’s task easier. This is probably due to the as-yet-unidentified catalyst Max Krome used to create Metal X. As far as anyone knows, the metal doesn’t have intelligence of its own.
NRAMA: You and Bob have a solid history with armored characters. Rather than create another iteration of Iron Man or X-O, what did the two of you pull from to make this armor character different?
<a href="http://classic.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/METALLIX3.jpg"><img src="http://classic.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/METALLIX3_t.jpg" border="0" width="165" height="241" alt="Metallix #1, page 3" align="right"></a>DM: Bob used his reading on nano-technology and smart metals to develop the initial idea of a programmable suit of high-tech armor. For the fictional side of the concept, I’d peg the old Challengers of the Unknown comic book as an influence. We both liked the idea of a group of non-powered adventurers exploring the unknown, risking their lives for the thrill of it and for the knowledge they might discover. Adding programmable armor gives that basic premise a widened dimension and more possibilities.
NRAMA: But with this armor, rather than a single wearer, you’ve got a team exchanging the suit. Run ‘em down…
DM: Gil Sanderson is the team’s leader. An ex-army officer and Gulf War veteran, Gil is the only one of the group with actual combat experience. He’s serious, and can be considered something of a tight-ass by his team, but he cares about them more than they imagine, and would give his life for them without hesitation.
Blue Hill an expert diver, both scuba and mixed-gas deep diving. Her field of expertise is marine science, with degrees in both biology and archeology. Her natural senses (hearing, vision, etc.) are sharper than average; when enhanced by the Metal X armor, they become extraordinary.
Aidan O’Connor is a pilot and wannabe astronaut. He’s the team’s expert on everything involving aeronautics or outer space, and can fly anything with wings or props. Though he spent some time in the R.A.F., and is a tournament level martial artist, he’s never experienced actual combat. Until he joins Metallix.
Seth Wong is quiet and intense. He doesn’t make friends easily, but when he does accept you his loyalty is unswerving. He’s a geologist with a particular interest in volcanology. An Olympic-level gymnast, his reflexes and ability to judge spatial relationships become uncanny when enhanced by the Metal X armor. He refuses to kill, even in self-defense, which doesn’t endear him to Gil.
NRAMA: With that kind of team assembled, who would call upon them?
DM: Although there’s the possibility of governmental participation and international/political involvement in the future, for now Team Metallix is a group of corporate problem-solvers. Their employer, Redstone Research, hires them out as field agents to resolve dangerous or puzzling situations that don’t seem approachable by standard means. In our first story, they’ve been sent to a Central American country to discover how crude being pumped from a new oil field is becoming contaminated, putting the nation’s economy at risk. In our second story arc, communications from an Antarctic research station have mysteriously ceased, and the team is sent in to find out why. With the Metal X armor they can go anywhere, so assignments at the bottom of the sea, in the Sahara Desert, even in outer space are possible.
NRAMA: That said, you’ve got one suit of armor and four potential wearers. What's the group dynamic, both literal and figurative?
<a href="http://classic.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/METALLIX4.jpg"><img src="http://classic.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/METALLIX4_t.gif" border="0" width="165" height="241" alt="Metallix #1, page 4" align="left"></a>DM: The armor is worn by the team member whose particular enhanced skills are best suited to a given situation. If circumstances change during any phase of a mission, the armor can be shifted to a different team member by physical contact. Gil tends to keep the armor himself, feeling an almost obsessive sense of responsibility for his crew, due to an incident in his past that will be delved into around issue #5, and sometimes has to be talked into transferring it to someone else.
NRAMA: What would Gil want the suit as his own? What can the suit do, in addition to augmenting the wearer's natural abilities?
DM: A: It can pretty much do whatever is programmed into it, governed only by the laws of physics and the programmer’s imagination. For instance, though wearers can “leap small buildings at a single bound” due to a propelling burst of reverse magnetism, they can’t actually fly. But in our first arc, a scientist at Redstone develops a program to generate thin membranes from the wearer’s arms, acting essentially as parachute-like wings, giving them extended gliding ability. They still can’t fly, but this gives them far greater range and maneuverability. New abilities can be programmed into the armor as new challenges arise.
NRAMA: By mentioning the Superman catchphrase though, you do open the similar doorway - as powerful as the suit is, what could possibly be a threat to it/the wearer?
DM: The armor, as it is now, can impede and dampen attack by physical objects; that is, bullets, blades, and pressures such as the concussive effects of an explosion. But as we see in issue #2, such things as coherent light – lasers - can still get through. Also, unless the wearer specifically forms the armor’s “mask” into a full-coverage helmet, the wearer could be vulnerable to gas or biotoxic attack. Also, the effects of electricity and various forms of radiation are unknown.
NRAMA: So what hope does Max Krome have of stopping it in order to steal it?
DM: All he needs is himself. In a failed experiment to duplicate Metal X, Max’s body becomes fused with a new substance - call it “Metal Y” for simplicity’s sake - that shares the basic molecular structure of Metal X. As a result, his physical form, molded into blades, clubs or other such weapons, can get through Metal X. But fair is fair, and we find in issue #2 that Metal X can also damage Krome in his “metallicized” state.
NRAMA: Are there others, besides Krome who want to get their hands on the suit? After all, it doesn’t seem that the military would be too thrilled with there being only one of these suits out there, and they don't have it…
<a href="http://classic.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/METALLIX5.jpg"><img src="http://classic.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/METALLIX5_t.jpg" border="0" width="165" height="241" alt="Metallix #1, page 5" align="right"></a>DM: After being booted out of Redstone Research, Max Krome turns to another C.E.O., Arthur Rathrock, for help. Rathrock is about as slimy as a human being can get, so has naturally become a huge success in Big Business. For now, Artie is happy to support Krome because Krome’s activities screw up other companies; i.e., the competition. But if Krome were to actually gain possession of Metal X, well, let’s just say that Rathrock’s main loyalty is to himself.
Of course, the government and the military wouldn’t mind having the secrets of Metal X themselves. And there are a couple of characters from our other series, Ang Mann in Freemind, and Adonis DuLac in Deathmask who could probably find uses for the Metallix armor. Time will tell.
NRAMA: Any other details, other than what you’ve already said, that you’d care to share about your first story arc?
DM: There’s a beginning-middle-end story that runs through issues #1 and #2, and another than runs through issues #3 and #4. But all of those form the background for an overall story that concludes in issue #5 with events that impact the group and the series permanently.
We’re also doing a little something different, format-wise, with Metallix. Instead of having one 28-page story, our first four issues feature a 22-page lead story and a 6-page back-up. This means more work for us, but we think it’s worth it in this case because we’re actually telling the origin of the Metallix team through the back-up stories. So while an ongoing adventure is taking place in the lead story, the reader is being brought up to speed on how everything came about via the back-up. With issue #5 we’re back to 28-page single stories.
NRAMA: Given that you and Bob are closely associated with Metallix, Iron Man
comparisons are naturally going to be made. So how does Metallix compare and contrast to Iron Man, Tony, and the rest of the mythos?
DM: The background of the Metallix series is cutting edge technology, and action involves a suit of metallic armor. And that’s about it for the similarities. In Iron Man there’s one guy who runs everything: Tony Stark. He’s the boss, the inventor, the guy in the suit. With Metallix, the suit was actually invented by our arch villain, is worn by four different people, and those wearers are employees. Plus, none of the people wearing the suit really knows how it works. They can’t just “McGuyver” repairs or alterations in the field. The main operative difference, however, is that the personalities of the four Metallix team members are widely different from that of Tony Stark.
NRAMA: Backing up from there, who created the concept of Metallix?
<a href="http://classic.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/METALLIX6.jpg"><img src="http://classic.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/METALLIX6_t.jpg" border="0" width="165" height="241" alt="Metallix #1, page 6" align="right"></a>DM: Bob came up with the name, and the idea of a programmable suit of smart metal armor, when we were working on an Iron Man project for Marvel. That assignment went away, but we still had the name and the concept, so we decided to use it for a series at Future. In an effort to move the concept farther away from Iron Man, I suggested that it be a team book, since “Metallix” can be viewed as plural as well as singular. I then came up with the idea of having only one suit of armor that is switched between each of the team members, to try to make the book different from all of the team books already out there.
NRAMA: Did Bob come up with the suit design as well?
DM: Yes - Bob designed the original Metallix armor on his own. [Series artist] Ron Lim may be adding tweaks here and there as the series progresses.
NRAMA: Wrapping up, give the larger picture - what's the big theme of Metallix, the heart of the book?
DM: I don’t know, at least consciously, and I don’t really want to think about it too much. I feel in my gut that I have a solid handle on what the book is all about, but if I try to bring that to the surface and analyze it, I’m afraid I’ll end up being too self-conscious about it as I plot/write the book. I’d rather let the Big Picture paint itself, stroke by stroke, so I can be entertained and surprised along with the readers.
Like Future Comics’ other releases, Metallix will be sold directly to consumers and retailers at the company’s website, <a href="http://www.futurecomiconline.com" target="_blank">www.futurecomiconline.com</a>