MARK MILLAR: ONE MAN EVENT, I

[MattBrady]

You may have noticed - Mark Millar’s been busy in the Marvel Universe lately. And he’s only going to be getting busier.

Currently, he’s writing Fantastic Four and Kick-Ass, the former in the Marvel Universe proper, the latter under Marvel’s creator-owned ICON imprint. Coming in May is the debut of the long-gestating Marvel 1985 with Tommy Lee Edwards, and in June, a run on Wolverine set in the future entitled Wolverine: Old Man Logan with Steve McNiven.

Or, as he likes to call all four together (he swears there’s a connection), his own “One Man Event.”

In this, the first of a two-part interview, we spoke with Millar about Marvel 1985 and Fantastic Four

Newsarama: First off Mark - what was the start of this, the germ of the idea that's now become 1985?

Mark Millar: I have a curious interest in seeing superheroes in the real world. It's a theme that runs through my work, I suppose, and I guess it comes from discovering Alan Moore when I was twelve in 1982. This was the beginning of realistic superheroes really hitting the mainstream and all comic-book writers try to recreate the stuff that wowed them when they were twelve years old. Kick-Ass, Wanted and Chosen all take place in our world, but even stuff like Ultimates and Authority don't feel too far away from us either. Marvel 1985 really takes this to the next level and has all these villains travelling here through a wormhole and doing whatever they please. That was the beginning of the story in many ways.

The idea that even a low-level crook like Electro or Sandman would destroy pretty much anything they found on our world. we can't be wowed anymore just by seeing the Hobgoblin zip past on his glider because people in the Marvel Universe see this every day, but in the real world we'd be seeing this with fresh eyes and it would be awesome. It's the antithesis of Marvels in many ways. That was a book about a real person in the Marvel Universe. Our story is about these fantastic characters existing here in our world.

NRAMA: Tell us about your protagonist here...who is Toby, and what's he like?

MM: Toby's an eleven year old boy who hasn't quite discovered girls yet and just lives and breathes Marvel comic-books. He's in a small American town, has almost no friends and nobody besides the two guys who run the local comic store to talk about his great passions. He's very slightly emotionally retarded and has been on medication since his parents split and his Mum remarried and at first we think these sightings of The Vulture or The Red Skull or Ultron in his home town is just an example of his drift into mental illness. But we soon discover this is all very real and something really bad is going on in town and it's all centered around a haunted house in the middle of the woods. Now this house and this big plan is all very, very related to my Fantastic Four run. The villain here is the villain there and the two stories tie together, both feeding into Wolverine: Old Man Logan too. Of course, you can read these all on their own and they're beautifully filling, but read them all together and you can find our where one guy came from or what another guy did next. Wolverine, FF and Marvel 1985 are really my own One Man Event this Summer. Even Kick-Ass ties in loosely, which is a bit cheeky for a creator-owned book, but there's a link between the 11 year old comic fan from 1985 and the 16 year old comic fan from 2008. I did this with the first wave of Millarworld books back in 2003, but I'm tying everything together much more overtly here. It's a genuine big crossover and all ties together with the two men who trained up Doctor Doom.

NRAMA: We’ll get to that in a moment, but before we talk Fantastic Four, let’s talk about why you chose 1985 specifically as the setting?

MM: That's an interesting question. First up, it's my childhood. It's the period of Marvel I'm most nostalgic for and when the heroes just seemed like clear-cut heroes. Cap was Cap, the FF were the FF (OK, apart from She-Hulk) and Iron Man was wearing the armor I have in my
head when I hear the name Tony Stark. I also think it's a high water-mark in creativity as so many of my favorite creators were all working there at the same time. But more importantly, I wanted to do a timeless Marvel story and the best way to do timeless is not to do something current. This makes it more of a myth in the same way as Indiana Jones and Star Wars can never look out of date. Setting it outside of current trends gives the project a purity I like. I watched Raiders again a couple of weeks ago and it still stands up in a way that Sahara, for example, won't. Of course, Sahara was ____e, but you get my point.

NRAMA: As far as the Marvel characters go, you're adhering to what you said there - these are the characters who were around in 1985 with their 1985 attitudes and 1985 voices?

NRAMA: Oh, yeah. Definitely. Magneto is leading the X-Men, She-Hulk is in the FF, Spidey is sometimes wearing that black costume, but doesn't quite know what it is yet. This is very definitely set twenty-three years ago. But I'm not going to be making constant references to that. The BBC's Ashes To Ashes show, for example, is set around the same time and it drives me nuts that every single line references Pac-Man, Duran Duran, white socks, rolled up sleeves, mullets and everything we associate with that era. This is obviously peppered with some subtle references, but not the object of the exercise. I want to do a mythic Marvel story here.

NRAMA: What gets the ball rolling? This story has more than a nod to 1985's Secret Wars, correct?

MM: Yes, one of the final scenes from Secret Wars is our opening scene.

NRAMA: How exactly do the characters get to Toby's/"our" world?

MM: That's the mystery that runs through the book, but it's all based around an old place called The Wyncham House in the middle of the woods where a local mentally-handicapped guy called Clyde Wyncham lived until his mother died and he was taken into hospital. There's something in his cellar that links our world and the Marvel Universe and this is the basis of the series itself.

NRAMA: So explain the start of the "invasion" then...who's first in, and what do they do?

MM: It starts small. We get the Ditko kind of villains coming through at first and doing a little reccy on our world. They report back to the bigger players and explain that here we are, sitting ducks with New York, LA, Tokyo and London just like their world, but nothing to protect us. No super-heroes. What comes next, I suppose, is like the Mai Lai Massacre where the villains can just come through and do anything they want. There're no repercussions. It's a very dark story in many ways and we start in a small town before it all gets bigger and spreads out across the country. The small town is where the kid lives and it's a little like 30 Days of Night in that regard. It's all about a small place in America under attack from the villains of the Marvel U.

NRAMA: We've seen stories - more "realistic" stories...and you're written one or two of them...about super-powered beings coming to a "real" world, and basically, they always kick the utter crap out of it. Who's to stop them from doing that here? Even the lamest Marvel villain (looking at you Batroc) could be a devil of a time for "real" law enforcement...not to mention a Magneto...

MM: Exactly.

NRAMA: You like to play with political and/or social themes in your work. Are you going to be playing in that pond with this?

MM: Hmm. It's not political at all, actually, but it's very psychological. I tapped into that feeling of being eleven and isolated from other people who liked this stuff and the usual themes I like about parents and children. It's also about the end of childhood and goes to some very dark places using these characters. But at the same time it's very optimistic. There's some real Lord of the Rings moments and stuff happening on a scale I don't think I've done before. It would be a great movie and Marc Platt, the guy who's producing Wanted, says I should have changed some names and sold it to him.

I kicked myself a little for that as it would have been a lot more money, but it works so well with Marvel characters. There's a power to this iconography and it fits in so well with Wolvie and FF. This is the spine that ties the other things together, the heart of on 2008 work and final year at Marvel.

NRAMA: Just wrapping up with 1985 - can you take us through a few of the bigger beats of the story? Any particular scenes we should be on the lookout for?

MM: The best scene in the book comes at the end of issue five. I can't say what it is, but I think it's the best scene I've ever done and features a character we all know and love. But using him here makes him a genuine threat for the first time since his first appearance. It's my favorite scene in anything I have out this year. I can say no more without spoiling everything.

NRAMA: Fair enough. Moving on to Fantastic Four then. Let's talk about your and Bryan's first storyline. Obviously there are a lot of elements to touch upon, but let's go to the biggie - the parallel earth. Where did that particular story element come from? Was that what you hooked on first, and the rest of the story, with Alyssa and the rest grew up around that, or was it vice versa?

MM: No, Alyssa was where it all started. Reed is the rock in the first arc and I really wanted to use this story to establish just how cool he is. He's called Mister Fantastic, for God's sake, but can often be written very wrongly as a nerd or a drip. Of course, he has nerd tendencies, but look at the Kirby and Buscema era in particular and the guy is a good-looking action hero who faces off against Sub-Mariner, Galactus and anyone else who pisses him off. Even before he got his powers, he and his friends hijacked a bloody rocket. So I wanted to reaffirm Reed's more manly credentials right away and also play around with the strains in his marriage somewhat. Every husband or wife occasionally meets someone they really click with, sometimes years after they're married with kids, and it's uncomfortable. Sometimes you have more in common with them than the person you married. Alyssa Moy-Castle is the female Reed in many ways and the Nu-Earth project she's been working on was just a big crazy thing I thought Reed would be excited by. But there's clearly more to it than we suspect and she's obviously still very attracted to Reed. That's as important to the story in parts three and four as the enormous fight we get for two issues.

NRAMA: That touches upon another, larger point - in your view, what makes for a good FF story? What elements have to be there? As Johnny said in your second issue, they're not really "crime fighters" so that kind of rules out almost an entire genre of stories...so where do they fit?

MM: I'm not a huge fan of the movies, but a brilliant line someone got in there was that their powers are 'symptoms'. I thought this was very clever and sums it all up perfectly. Batman chose to be a superhero and even Spider-Man made this decision after his Uncle was shot. But the FF are never out there on patrol at night. They're really more like ordinary people with remarkable abilities who are either attacked occasionally because they're so high profile or they get a call from friends who are in trouble. Reed might stumble across something huge they have to defeat, but for the most part they just want to get on with their exciting lives and the battles are unfortunate things they have to deal with occasionally. They're so unlike regular superheroes in so many regards, but that's what makes them great to write. I just love them.

NRAMA: What have the characters revealed about themselves to you since you began writing them? Who was the first to "open up" and who's still something of a cipher?

MM: Well, Reed was my first port of call in many ways, but I don't think any of them were screwed up. This is a book that's had so many great creative teams over the years and the characters are so strong and well defined even an idiot would have a hard time messing with them. So the book has usually been in a very good place. I genuinely like them all and feel they all jostle for space as I write each scene. Each character could almost hold their own book, which isn't always the case in an ensemble cast.

NRAMA: You mentioned wanting to put Reed in the center of the storm, but what other goals do you have for this first storyline?

MM: The most important thing for Bryan and I was to make the book feel new again. We agreed that Doom was going to be the only very established character we used and everything else would be brand new material. Lee and Kirby were always creating new characters and concepts. They didn't always work, but the rate of their creativity was so stunning that a massive chunk of the current Marvel U came out of those first 100 issues. We're trying to add to this mythology with Nu Earth, CAP, Alyssa and her crew plus upcoming stuff that ties into Wolverine: Old Man Logan like The Protectors, Reed's cousin, The Hooded Man and The Masters of Doom. The latter are probably my favorite creations from the whole run. These are the guys who trained up Doctor Doom in the black arts and they're genuinely very frightening. These are good characters to leave behind for others to play with.

NRAMA: A few specifics from “World’s Greatest” - the scientists at Nu World say that the earth was screwed 10 years ago, and its destiny is irreversible. Why's that? What happened then?

MM: That was the tipping point and based on a rogue report one of Gordon Brown (British Prime Minister)'s eco advisors came out with. It freaked everybody out a little as we like to think every problem can be solved, but he said shifting to gauze shopping bags or giving up tap water will do nothing. It's too late. And 90% of the earth's population will be dead as we all migrate North and fight for the last few places where we can survive and grow crops. This is the basis for Old Man Logan too and it's very bleak, but interesting to write about. Naturally, I hope it doesn't happen, but it makes good comics.

NRAMA: And Reed doesn't smell a scam here? Or at least the absence of altruism? The Nu Worlders have tech far superior to anything on earth, and yet they refuse to share even to help people. This is one of Reed's classic blind spots, isn't it?

MM: Absolutely. There's obviously something Alyssa isn't telling Reed and he's so into the data he can't see the wood for the trees. This all links into the second arc, teasingly called “The Death of the Invisible Woman,” and these two four-parters make up one big eight part story, though both are perfectly satisfying in their own right. But if I were Sue Richards I'd be worried... especially after reading this interview - i.e, he's toast.

NRAMA: He hasn't shared the info with her yet, but what would Sue's reaction to Nu World and the people working on it have been?

MM: Reed and Sue are madly in love, but have a weird dysfunctional relationship where she's almost invisible to him in many ways, his work being his mistress, and so she's carved out a life of her own. That's part of the idea behind the Friends of Miss America team she's created with She-Hulk and The Wasp. They're in love, but really growing apart in many ways too. We establish in the first story that in many ways Alyssa is the woman Reed should have married. They have much more in common. Sue isn't interested in a lot of what Reed does. I feel her eyes would glaze over if he came back and told her about the Nu-World. It's like a husband talking about politics at work.

NRAMA: While we're talking about characters and type...dude...you have Johnny have sex with a chick he just met - during a fight. Himbo/slutty behavior aside, break it down in terms of story construction...why was that scene needed to get where you want to go?

MM: Johnny's great and re-reading all the old FF books I like how inconsistently he's written. Sometimes there's a story where he really gets his ____ together and becomes a very reasonable guy and then another writer comes in and writes him like a seventeen year old. There's no character arc like we had with Peter Parker and so on. But that's what I like about him. It's what makes him more like a real person. We can all be dickish and we can all be very mature. But when the chips are down Johnny is absolutely in your corner. The only trouble is that he's fallen asleep drunk in it first and vomited down the back of your sofa. The scene with Psionics is the beginning of something massive. It starts off with the awkwardness of shagging someone who's breaking the law and feeling bad about it, but this is only the tip of the iceberg.

NRAMA: So where are things going from here...the CAP is loose...and hunting.

MM: Issues #556 and #557 are a great big bastard of a fight. Nuff said. But I'm setting up all these little things nobody has even noticed yet and there's a few major shocks coming. Bryan and I are giggling and very pleased with ourselves because the rug is about to be pulled from right under your feet.

NRAMA: Let's talk about some of those larger things to come - next issue, from the cover at least...the problems with Nu World start to show up? And the final battle with CAP...and....should we ask about Sue?

MM: Sue's absolutely fine and healthy for this arc and least, but powerful forces are ranged against here and there's an enormous plan that doesn't make her long-term prospects look so hot. Things really heat up with Ben's girlfriend too. Tom and I were talking about this, but Ben's never actually dated an ordinary person since he was disfigured and that's a lot of fun to play with. The idea of The Thing meeting her parents or taking Debbie and her friends out on a double-date to The Savage Land or whatever. There's just tons to play with here and that's been jostling for space with all the upcoming dramas like the Anti-Galactus, the new Nanny, the big secret with Franklin and Valeria that rocks the team to the core, the journey into the future with Old Man Logan and a world without superheroes, the mystery of the Hooded Man, the death of Sue, one of the team getting married, one of the team being a traitor (and none of that involving the Skrulls). We have huge things planned, but nothing bigger than The Marquis of Death and Earl Wyncham. These are the men who trained Doctor Doom and they come back right after we have the team vacation in Scotland with Reed's cousin (and another big mystery). Plus the gay Johnny Storm from a parallel universe living in a civil partnership with Reed. He's Jack Storm and has been a lot of fun to write so far.

NRAMA: Ho-kay – let’s pick through a couple of those…firstly, Doom. Give us your take on the Reed/Doom dichotomy. What is it? What isn't it?

MM: Two people who should have been best friends who fell out because Reed is 1% smarter and Doom couldn't live with it. He's spent his entire life trying to prove he's Reed's superior, totally embittered by Reed's happiness and success, but Reed proves his superiority with his annual ass-whupping. Doom is a typical European, essentially.

NRAMA: From the #558 solicitation, it's indicated that someone has liberated Doom. Any hints?

MM: Yes, we tie in directly with New Avengers and Secret Invasion. Not
with the Skrulls, but we're both using Doom and what Brian (Bendis) does with Doom feeds directly into issue #558 and then what we do feeds into the end of Secret Invasion. Once Secret Invasion is done, we have Doom back and it's the biggest shock of them all. I love the idea of a cohesive Marvel Universe. Not where we're finishing each other's stories (which is horrible), but where we loan out characters and having everything threaded together

NRAMA: And also from the solicitation...what's going on with Valeria?

MM: See ish #559. There's a new nanny on the scene and she has something to do with all this. It's very, very sinister and baby Val just might not be as cute as she seems.

NRAMA: Of course, wouldn't be an interview about a book by you and Bryan if we didn't ask about the schedule - how are things progressing?

MM: Beautiful. Our sixteen issues is fourteen issues of the comic, plus a 56 page Christmas special. Bryan's drawn around nine issues of the comic so far and pretty much all of the special so there's only about five and a half issues left to draw and about a year to do it in. He started this around March last year and has managed 11 issues very comfortably in that year (plus loads of outside work on films and telly) so we're in great shape. We made Bry agree that if he was late we'd just get a fill-in guy as FF can't run late, but he's done amazing. I'm really pleased for him. The book looks great and he's making so much money now the tight bastard will hopefully buy a round of drinks when I see him at the New York Comic-Con.

Marvel 1985 #1 is due in stores on May 14th; Fantastic Four #556 is slated to arrive on April 9th.

Check back tomorrow as we talk with Millar about Kick-Ass and Wolverine: Old Man Logan.

[HartyPotter]

Wow, some AMAZING art here.

[J.D. Lombardi]

You'd think he was reinventing the wheel...

[De Martini]

Originally Posted by J.D. Lombardi

You'd think he was reinventing the wheel...

He *did* invent the wheel, all the while equally pleased with himself and shocked that "nobody else had ever tried it before".

[C20Percent]

I'm definitely enjoying his Fantastic Four -- can't wait for the next issue. I loved the first issue of Kick-Ass. That said, my first instinct is to wait on 1985 until I read some reviews; I'm not sure if I'm going to buy that blindly.

[skyking]

"I did this with the first wave of Millarworld books back in 2003, but I'm tying everything together much more overtly here..."

Quick question for the board: What was the underlying event or theme that tied "Wanted," "The Unfunnies," and "Chosen" together?

[deathmasterj]

It would be a great movie and Marc Platt, the guy who's producing Wanted, says I should have changed some names and sold it to him.

Or they could have just stuck to the plot of Wanted, you know, where villains kind of invade a world with no heroes

1985 genuinely didn't interest me until now, but the more I read about it the more interested I get.

[Ace]

The weirdest thing about this to me is that I always was under the impression that he didn't read any Marvel comics from around 1985, that what he had growing up in the UK were reprints from the sixties, and that he hadn't even read Byrne's FF until he was working on Ultimate FF.

I always factored that in when I saw how poorly he wrote characters consistant to what had come before.

Weird.

[Mercer]

The first issues of the Millar/Hitch Fantastic Four were awesome. Probably the only series where Back to Basics means throwing out Ridiculously Big Ideas.

1985 sounds... interesting. Actually, it sounds like the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon in reverse. I'm not sold on it, but I'll probably grab the first issue.

[know_access]

Originally Posted by MattBrady

The best scene in the book comes at the end of issue five. I can't say what it is, but I think it's the best scene I've ever done and features a character we all know and love. But using him here makes him a genuine threat for the first time since his first appearance.

Really excited about this part. Who could it be?

Oh plus, Anti-Galactus?

[alexeiluthor]

Wyncham House?

...

Wyndham? Like...that Wyndham?

[Mercer]

Originally Posted by know_access

Really excited about this part. Who could it be?

Oh plus, Anti-Galactus?

I vote that Millar's talking about the Mole Man. Or the Trapster.

[Mercer]

Originally Posted by alexeiluthor

Wyncham House?

...

Wyndham? Like...that Wyndham?

I thought it was more of a riff on the Winchester House. *shrugs*

GREAT sig, by the by.

[durkadurka]

Originally Posted by MattBrady

Millar: The best scene in the book comes at the end of issue five. I can't say what it is, but I think it's the best scene I've ever done and features a character we all know and love. But using him here makes him a genuine threat for the first time since his first appearance. It's my favorite scene in anything I have out this year. I can say no more without spoiling everything.

Galactus? That would be pretty scary.

Millar: This all links into the second arc, teasingly called “The Death of the Invisible Woman,” and these two four-parters make up one big eight part story, though both are perfectly satisfying in their own right. But if I were Sue Richards I'd be worried... especially after reading this interview - i.e, he's toast.

That could easily be a typo (and probably is), but a very confusing one.

MM: Issues #556 and #557 are a great big bastard of a fight. Nuff said.

Nice.

There's just tons to play with here and that's been jostling for space with all the upcoming dramas like the Anti-Galactus, the new Nanny, the big secret with Franklin and Valeria that rocks the team to the core, the journey into the future with Old Man Logan and a world without superheroes, the mystery of the Hooded Man, the death of Sue, one of the team getting married, one of the team being a traitor (and none of that involving the Skrulls). We have huge things planned, but nothing bigger than The Marquis of Death and Earl Wyncham. These are the men who trained Doctor Doom and they come back right after we have the team vacation in Scotland with Reed's cousin (and another big mystery). Plus the gay Johnny Storm from a parallel universe living in a civil partnership with Reed. He's Jack Storm and has been a lot of fun to write so far.

HOLY FREAKING CRAP, MAN!! You crazy sumbitch!

I was curious as to how Millar and Hitch's FF would tie in to Secret Invasion, if at all. Apparently not all that much, which is weird considering the Skrulls originated in FF. But i guess there will be a mini tie-in series or something.

FF is amusing so far, with a lot of cool ideas being thrown around, but i have yet to be truly wowed. All i could think of was the remake of Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

1985 actually looks really cool. I had doubts about it, mostly because i had no idea what was going on, but the previews look pretty fantastic in my opinion. Looking forward to that one.

[Punchy]

Wyncham this, Wyncham that, is Millar trying to do a Dark Tower?

It all sounds like good fun anyway, apart from Gay alternate universe Johnny Storm and Reed, that just sounds like shock for shock's sake, something people often claim Millar does, but I don't really see.

[Harmful]

Another love letter to Stan Lee

[Darkseid_Is]

Man that FF art is awesome. The Thing especially really comes off as being like a modernized version of Kirby. I love it. Millar is hit or miss for me, but the way these stories tie into each other sounds pretty interesting.

[Rich L]

I'm kind of enjoying FF (except for Millar's use of Torch), and I'll take a look at 1985 but the thing that's really rankling me is that Slott just got Ben and Alicia back together after years being apart - and she's completely ignored and written out. At least include a one-panel nod to that...

"...Ben's never actually dated an ordinary person since he was disfigured..."

...oh, and last I checked blind people were ordinary too (unless this refers to her being the niece of a villain - but still, a little tact,eh?) .

[Robot H Brian]

Gorgeous Edwards art. It makes me very glad the initially announced photographic approach didn't pan out.

[Kinnelon]

After his homophobic work in "Kick Ass", I'll never read anything the man writes again.

[Punchy]

Originally Posted by Kinnelon

After his homophobic work in "Kick Ass", I'll never read anything the man writes again.

Homophobic?

A character he wrote, who is not him, just a character, used the word 'homo', oh no, I suppose you're one of the types who claim Robert Kirkman is homophobic for the 'This is so gay' motif in Invincible.

Don't be so sensitive.

[Mercer]

Dammit, Punchy, you beat me to the punch... y

[Mercer]

Originally Posted by Kinnelon

After his homophobic work in "Kick Ass", I'll never read anything the man writes again.

Homophobic?

[Mercer]

And by Urza's Sunglasses, how did my messages get reversed?

[deathmasterj]

Originally Posted by Kinnelon

After his homophobic work in "Kick Ass", I'll never read anything the man writes again.

Wasn't Miller the one who married Midnighter and Apollo in The Authority? Possibly one of the first gay marriages in comics? The guy is far from being homophobic!